Meet Multicolored Zebrafish!

by Mine G.

Hey there! Today I am going to talk about something really interesting - and also colorful! Let me introduce you "genetically engineered" multicolored zebrafish! Even though it looks beautiful land very eye catching, there is a reason for why Duke scientists created this amazing fish. So, what is the reason beyond?

Duke University have created a multicolored zebrafish to closely watch individual cell's behaviors during the process of tissue regeneration. Scientists color marked every cell of the zebrafish with a different hue, thus let the scientist see how the skin heals itself. According to the article on DukeToday, "Before we can fully understand tissue regeneration, we need to be able to monitor what individual cells are doing.This is a cutting-edge way to visualize hundreds or thousands of cells at once in a regenerating tissue.”

This multicolor technology which the Duke scientists name Skinbow is actually referenced from a technology called Brainbow, which labeled the neurons on the brain with colors. 

The colors are embedded in the DNA of the skin cells, basically contain green, red and blue fluorescent proteins. As a result, scientists are able to see 70 different hues under a microscope.

After the coloring process, researchers started doing experiments to see how the individual cells work in cooperation with each other to heal the skin. On his inteview published in Gizmodo, Poss says, "One thing we weren’t expecting is that within a few hours of injury, cells that are spared acquire some mobility on the surface.They also expand in size, some doubling. Then there’s a quick wave of replacement—you can see new cells emerging from the layer underneath." 

Skinbow techniques is a great way to visualize cells' behavior and it is likely to give more information about tissue regeneration when it is combined with other imaging techniques. Scientists hope that it could be applied to other living organisms, even humans to keep track of how tissue regeneration occurs or how tissue reacts to new cancer treatments.

To learn more, check out the video:

References: Technicolor Zebrafish Reveal How Skin Heals. (2016 March 21). Retrieved April 11, 2016, from https://today.duke.edu/2016/03/zebrafish

 Stone, M. (2016, March 21). This Technicolor Mutant Zebrafish Is Synthetic Biology's Craziest Creation Yet. Retrieved April 11, 2016, from http://gizmodo.com/this-technicolor-mutant-zebrafish-is-synthetic-biologys-1766125296 

Images: http://www.slate.com/articles/video/video/2016/03/zebrafish_skin_rainbow_in_duke_labs_shows_how_fish_respond_to_injury_video.html

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2081743-fish-with-rainbow-skin-shows-how-cells-move-when-skin-regrows/