Danio rerio

Odor receptor expression

A whole mount in situ of a 54 hour embryo probed with a mixture of three odor receptor clones. The clusters of spots anterior to the eye are single olfactory neurons expressing odor receptor genes corresponding to one of the three probes. (Byrd, CA, JT Jones, JM Quattro, ME Rogers, PC Brunjes, RG Vogt (1996) Ontogeny of odorant receptor gene expression in zebrafish, Danio rerio. J. Neurobiology 29(4), 445-458.)

Species name

It was pointed out at the Zebrafish Development and Genetics meeting at Cold Spring Harbor (April 27, 1994) that the correct genus/species name for "our" zebrafish is Danio rerio and no longer Brachydanio rerio.

See: Predicting developmental processes from evolutionary patterns: a molecular phylogeny of the zebrafish (Danio rerio) and its relatives. Axel Meyer, Peter A. Ritchie and Kai-Erik Witte (1995) Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 349, 103-111.

And, as appeared in The Zebrafish Science Monitor (October 25, 1993, Vol 2, Issue 4):

THE PHYLOGENETIC POSITION OF THE ZEBRAFISH (DANIO RERIO), A MODEL SYSTEM IN DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY: AN INVITATION TO THE COMPARATIVE METHOD

By A. Meyer, C.H. Biermann, and G. Ortí, Department of Ecology & Evolution, State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY 11794-5245, USA (Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B (1993) 252:231-236)

The zebrafish, Danio (Brachydanio) rerio, has become one of the most widely studied model systems in developmental biology. We present a DNA-based phylogeny of zebrafish and other species of the genus Danio, and the genera Rasbora, Puntius, and Cyprinus. Homologous regions of the large (16S) mitochondrial ribosomal RNA gene were amplified by the polymerase chain reaction and directly sequenced. The phylogeny revealed: (i) the zebrafish, Danio (Brachydanio) rerio is identical in its 16S sequence to its aquarium breeding morph, the leopard danio; (ii) the pearl danio (Danio albolineatus) is more closely related to the zebrafish than the giant danio (Danio aequipinnatus); and (iii) species of the genus Rasbora (hetermorpha, trilineata, elegans, pauciperforata, dorsiocellata) are more closely related to the danios than members of the genus Puntius (tetrazona, conchonius) and Cyprinus, the carp. All of these species are readily available in the aquarium trade, easily kept and bred in captivity, and amenable to developmental work. It is hoped that this molecular phylogeny will invite developmental biologists to use the comparative method to ask questions about function (e.g. cellular and genetic aspects) and evolution of zebrafish developmental biology in a phylogenetic context.