One fish, two fish and 400,000 zebrafish
Hundreds of translucent creatures that biomedical researchers rely on for genetic insights settled into new digs today as researchers opened a newly refurbished and expanded animal repository called the European Zebrafish Resource Center. Housed at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in southwest Germany, the center can maintain 400,000 live fish at maximum capacity in more than 3,000 tanks, and will include lab space for on-site zebrafish in vitro fertilization. Uwe Strähle, a geneticist at KIT, told Nature Medicine by phone after the ribbon-cutting ceremony that European zebrafish researchers eager to preserve their hard-won transgenic and mutant lines may begin submitting eggs to the center. Currently the center houses 300 transgenic lines but Strähle expected the collection to expand to hold thousands of lines in the next five years. Read more
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