IDENTIFICATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF GENETIC MECHANISMS DRIVING PANCREAS DIFFERENTIATION IN ZEBRAFISH

Medical genetics, the science that studies and seeks to treat hereditary diseases in humans, has fundaments on experiments that Gregor Mendel and Thomas Morgan performed on the plant of the pea and the fruitfly (drosophila) respectively; two organisms quite different from humans. Other organisms provide a better compromise between their similarity with our species and their genetic exploitability (that depends from their reproductive potential). The mouse, for instance, is a mammal with reproductive abilities better than ours. Another animal under scientific exploitation, because of its reproductive potential and anatomy, is zebrafish. Being a vertebrate, its body plan is very similar to humans as it has heart, circulation, immune system, pancreas, brain and all the tissues of mammals. Moreover, it has a reproductive capability which is enormous when compared to ours: the female produces thousands of eggs from which transparent embryos develop. These features, together with the fact that zebrafish is susceptible to the same genetic diseases of humans, have promoted its scientific success and sequencing of its genome is going to be finished. With such a small and prolific animal whose embryo is transparent, it is possible to follow in vivo with fluorescence microscopy the genetic mechanisms controlling the appearance of cells producing insulin, the hormone lacking in juvenile diabetes. This scientific program proposes to study the genes and genetic mechanisms controlling the final fates of pancreatic stem-cells in zebrafish. Hopefully, understanding these issues will help to recapitulate artificially the genetic progression from stem- to insulin producing-cell and paving the way to relieve, and possibly cure, diabetes by means of self-transplantation.