Creating standards in zebrafish husbandry

Consider the humble zebrafish: An ideal model for studying vertebrate development, hearty and nearly ubiquitous.

These points may also be the primary reasons zebrafish husbandry is so poorly developed - an aspect of the model the New England Zebrafish Husbandry Association is looking to change.

Found in labs all around the world, the fish makes an ideal model for scientific research, partly because of the ease with which the animal can be maintained and bred - an ironic detail given the varying husbandry standards throughout the industry.

"Zebrafish have been used for a long time to study a lot of different things," Christian Lawrence of Brigham and Women's Hospital Karp Family Research Laboratories said. "They're an easy hobby fish. They're just around, and they're an easy fish to work on."

In the late 1980s, groups of neurodevelopment researchers in Boston and Germany began using them, a fact that helped propel the zebrafish usage to where it is today. However, Lawrence pointed out, these people were not fish biologists.

"The neurobiologists took an existing model and went with it," he said. "Because they were so easy to use, the husbandry was never developed. The fish biology was never developed."

This was able to happen because zebrafish are such a low-maintenance model.

"You don't really have to know all about them to grow them and get them to breed," Lawrence said. "You could abuse these fish and still get results."

That's where the founders of the New England Zebrafish Husbandry Association (NEZHA) come in. While care standards do exist - the zebrafish fall under the revised Guide for Care and Use of Laboratory Animals - the NEZHA states as its overall strategy a way to promote, and improve husbandry standards for the usage of zebrafish in scientific research.

The group wants to facilitate the exchange of ideas and standards from the many people around the world working with the zebrafish and who have nowhere to go, and to take that knowledge and move it forward in such a way so that the care can be standardized.

"For animal care professionals charged with zebrafish care and maintenance, the difficult husbandry situation is further compounded by the fact that informational resources on the subject are limited, at best," Lawrence said.

In an article in the January issue of Animal Lab News, Chris Obenschain, Business Development Manager of Marine Biotech, and Steve Aldrich, President of Marine Biotech, said it's ironic that the zebrafish's attributes have allowed the research community to exponentially increase the use of the zebrafish as an animal model without a corollary increase in directed research of specific husbandry requirements.

Founded by two people, the first association meeting brought in 20 participants and played out like a support group for people working with zebrafish. From that first meeting just over a year ago, members began to meet monthly. It quickly became apparent there was a void in the sector - not only in Boston, but everywhere.

"It was a great opportunity to push the field further," Lawrence said. "We knew on the basis of what was happening in Boston that we could easily grow this."

The NEZHA is now seeking to "promote and develop zebrafish husbandry standards through education, collaboration, and publication." The association now counts research and veterinary professionals, facility managers, technicians, fish culturists, aqua cultural engineers, and representatives from various private aquaculture supply and biomedical companies among its members.

Standardized requirements, Lawrence said, will lead to increased efficiency in a market that's expected to grow.