How does zebrafish research help humans?

We can't do research on humans so we find models that mimic the human, do the research using zebrafish, and then try to figure out how to extrapolate the data to humans... not an easy task. We are really never sure how exactly the data will match what we would have found if we use humans. Now that we know the genome of the human and are working on many other organisms, that process is getting easier. For example, if we find some gene altered in the zebrafish due to exposure to a toxicant or from a disease, then we can use the database to search for a similar gene in humans. We also now know that there is considerable conservation of pathways across species. Zebrafish are vertebrates. This means that they are more closely related to humans than invertebrates. By virtue of their being more closely related to humans, they are more likely to be similar in any biological trait than is a more distantly related organism. Some zebrafish mutants are known to develop and duplicate certain ...  more