Mutation-disease link masked in zebrafish
Disparity in methods complicates quest to figure out gene’s job
GENE SCENE Zebrafish experiments that didn’t go as planned may help researchers find genes that can fill in for others in a pinch.
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Zebrafish can find a way to compensate for a mutated gene, but artificial methods of inactivating the same gene are not so readily overcome, a new study suggests.
These findings, reported July 13 in Nature, add fuel to a technical debate among researchers about how to tell what a gene does in an organism.
An organism’s alternate strategy to compensate for a mutated gene can mask the gene’s absence. Zebrafish possess such a workaround for a mutation in a gene involved in blood vessel development, the new research finds. But fish with a normal copy of the gene can’t cope when researchers artificially block protein production from the same gene. Blocking protein production ought to have the same effect as a genetic mutation, but the fish handle the challenges differently, the researchers found.
If the same mechanisms that allow zebrafish to compensate for their defective
