The Zebrafish Anatomy Portal: a novel integrated resource to facilitate zebrafish research

Zebrafish is a common model organism in research and yet, despite its widespread use, anatomical resources for this species are incomplete or lacking in functionality. There remains a need for a single reference resource that integrates user-friendly tools to facilitate the identification of structures, display of reference images, provides data on gene expression, links to relevant literature, and covers the complete range of zebrafish developmental stages. To fulfill this need, we have designed the Zebrafish Anatomy Portal (www.zfap.org), containing annotated three-dimensional images of zebrafish at stages throughout development and adulthood, acquired by optical projection tomography. ZFAP combines functionalities to allow scanning through 3D data sets, searching of images by anatomical terms, predictions of gene expression from literature analysis, and facilitation of the identification of relevant literature through assisted searching of the NCBI PubMed resource. ZFAP provides a highly functional anatomical resource that will aid future education and research in the zebrafish model system.