Zebrafish: a model vertebrate suitable for the analysis of human genetic disorders

Zebrafish is a popular model vertebrate because of its conservation of a significant number of morphological and physiological processes in vertebrate organogenesis. A number of zebrafish mutants isolated from chemical mutagenesis screens exhibit characterized morphological defects that often resemble the symptoms of human genetic disorders. Recent innovations in genome-editing technologies, such as transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALEN) and the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/Cas9 system, enable us to investigate the loss-of-function phenotypes of developmentally regulated genes in zebrafish. This review highlights recent advances in reverse genetic technologies for zebrafish and presents possible applications of zebrafish for the study of human genetic disorders.