NEWS
Research Roundup
True Stripes
The lab supports both undergraduate and graduate faculty-mentored research projects.
The University of New Haven zebrafish lab, installed in August 2018, serves as a core research facility for the biology department. At any given time, 60 tanks are packed to the gills with as many as 1,000 zebrafish. This tropical fish, belonging to the minnow family, is a popular “model organism” for studying biological phenomena, increasing our understanding of human health and disease. The insights gained from this work will not only give us a better grasp on how cells decide when to divide, move, and differentiate, but they will also shed light on how genetic mutations can cause these same processes to go awry. The zebrafish genome has been fully sequenced to a very high quality. This has enabled scientists to create mutations in thousands of genes to study their function. Read on for more information about current faculty-mentored research projects being overseen by Dr. Carter Takacs, assistant professor in the Department of Biology and Environmental Science.
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Brain Formation Recent work has shown that microRNAs — a class of small, well-conserved molecules that have been demonstrated to regulate numerous biological pathways and cellular functions — play a critical role in ensuring that the brain forms properly. Previous work by Takacs and colleagues has revealed that the loss of one particular microRNA — miR-430 — leads to abnormal neural tube development in zebrafish. Student researchers will be studying the role that this microRNA plays in neural development for the zebrafish with the hope that this will create a more informed perspective on this same phenomenon in humans. To do this, they will couple genetic techniques with fluorescence microscopy to assess brain formation in vivo.
Zebrafish have a counterpart for 84% of human genes.
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ISSUE 03 SPRING 2019 ••
