The power of the zebrafish for disease analysis

The zebrafish is increasingly being used for the functional annotation of human disease genes as well as to model the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying pathological processes. Various attributes of the organism lend themselves to these studies, in particular the ease with which gene function can be manipulated together with the ability to image transgenically labelled cells in living animals. This review highlights a few recent studies relating to myopathies and neurodegenerative diseases in human that exemplify some of the advantageous attributes of the zebrafish. It also discusses some of its current limitations and how these are being addressed through the transfer of technologies from other systems.