Why Zebrafish having the regenerative ability to lost vision and heart is a miracle animal: how it is significant to mankind?

Among the numerous biological processes, regeneration is a significant process to restore the function of damaged organs. This whole process encapsulates cryptic biological mechanisms like cell differentiation, cell proliferation, and development. The vertebrates have a tremendous regenerative capacity to restore different organs, and it varies among different organisms. However, mammals' regeneration ability, including humans, is restricted to few organs like skin and liver. Among the vertebrates, Zebrafish (Danio rerio) is an excellent animal model system with spectacular regenerative capacity.

Zebrafish and its versatile regenerative ability

The zebrafish (Danio rerio) is a tiny a 2-5 cm long freshwater miraculous fish with huge tissues and organs regenerative potential. The significantly important organs or tissues with regeneration capacity are the spinal cord, brain, retina, caudal fin, kidney, liver, hair cells, and heart. Zebrafish is native to river basins in the Indo-Gangetic plains of South Asia. It reaches to adult stage in three months and can survive under laboratory conditions for 24-36 months. It has the unique feature of transparency, and we can observe the development of all the organs, including the beating heart. Its ability to significantly restore almost all of its organs makes it a model organism for biomedical researchers and developmental biologists.

Why zebrafish have amazing regenerative potential?

The remarkable organ regeneration ability of zebrafish after the damage is mainly due to the particular gene regulatory network which activates in response to damage. This type of gene network is repressed in other vertebrate models. Further, the epigenetic modification pathways have a role to play in regeneration. Throughout the life span, the zebrafish cells retain their proliferation ability. Then the immune response and Inhabitat environment also have a role to play in an organism's regeneration capacity.

Heart regeneration gene

Zebrafish have a natural fabulous ability to regenerate the heart after injury. This ability to heal the heart after damage makes Zebrafish an attractive genetic model to elucidate the mechanisms underlying regeneration. During the last month, November 2020, the researchers figured out that the ccn2a gene (cellular communication network factor 2a) is responsible for Cardiomyocyte (CM) proliferation and regeneration of damaged tissue.

Significance to humankind

  • Heart disease is one of the potent causes of losing millions of lives globally. Mammals, including humans, do not have the regenerative ability to heal their hearts after having a myocardial injury. On the other hand, zebrafish have this remarkable potential to heal a damaged heart. Unraveling molecular mechanisms behind the regenerative potential of zebrafish will facilitate scientific progress in human organs' regeneration.
  • Zebrafish is an excellent model to screen drugs for treating various human diseases.
  • It is a significant model amenable to both forward and reverse genetics tools.
  • High genome conservation between human and zebrafish explains its fitness to unravel treatment procedures for human diseases.
  • Zebrafish is an amazing vertebrate model to provide insight into skeletal disorders.
  • It is an excellent emerging animal model for investigating orthopedic research.
  • Its spectacular ability to regenerate almost all of its organs and tissues has the answer to treat many human injuries.
  • It is an excellent model for vaccination and pharmacological research. It will revolutionize human medical research.

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Apr 10, 2021, 4:51 PM - Masood ahmed
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