The zebrafish is a small tropical fish that has become one of the favoured animal model systems for research in many areas including embryonic development, genetic analyses of disease, neural circuit function and behaviour. One reason for this popularity is that zebrafish embryos are optically transparent and genetically tractable making them ideally suited for studies of cell and tissue behaviour and function. Zebrafish also exhibit sleep, social, hunting and other complex behaviours and progress in understanding the neuroanatomy of the brain is facilitating studies of the neural circuits mediating these behaviours.
On this site, you can learn about the wide range of research projects at UCL that use zebrafish and see many beautiful images and movies from these projects. We appreciate that not all our visitors are trained scientists and so we have public outreach pages that help to explain what we do.
There are many research groups using zebrafish for research at UCL and you can find out about some of them here, or continue reading about Zebrafish at UCL.
Zebrafish research at UCL is supported by a team of core staff, who you can read about here.
Karin Tuschl wins UCL Neuroscience Early Career Prize.
Ingrid Lekk's beautiful CRISPR zebrafish wins a Wellcome Image Award. Well done Ingrid!
Joanna's image of reticulospinal cells won the People’s Prize in this year's competition!
The Sir Henry Dale Fellowship has awarded to Elena Dreosti. She will be setting up her new group working on social behaviour at UCL so we can still see her often.
A research image from the Zebrafish Brain Atlas (zebrafishbrain.org) by PhD student Kate Turner is featured in a BBC article on tracking cells in the embryo.
The female sex hormone estrogen reduces sleep disruption in zebrafish genetically designed to help understand autism spectrum disorder (ASD)
Joanna was awarded a travel grant to attend the Champalimaud Neuroscience Symposium in September 2016.
Many of our images are available for download from Wellcome Images.
Simply search the collection for 'Zebrafish'. All images and movies are copyright of UCL Zebrafish Group please request permission before using.
We believe that science is meant to be shared, and not just with other scientists.
Below are a few details of some of the activities in which Zebrafish UCL labs participate in to disseminate science to the public.
A-Level Placements at Zebrafish UCL
The 2018 application deadline has now passed for Wilson/Rihel/Bianco/Tada Lab A-Level Work Experience Program for 2018. Click here for more information about the programme.
The UCL fish facility houses hundreds of lines of fish for the many investigators at UCL using zebrafish for their research. Here you can access the British Zebrafish Community Line Database.
Many of our images are available to download from Wellcome Images - simply search the collection for 'zebrafish'.
If you work with Zebrafish at UCL, click here for access to: QUARTZY, protocols, MISEQ, Galaxy, CRISPResso, zebrafishbooking (password protected).
For a full list of Zebrafish UCL publications by year click here, or choose a year below. You can also visit our publication summaries page to find summaries of papers that need less scientific knowledge to understand.
Gaia Gestri, Naiara Bazin-Lopez, Clarissa Scholes and Stephen W. Wilson (2018)
Cell Behaviors during Closure of the Choroid Fissure in the Developing Eye.
Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience. doi.org/10.3389/fncel.2018.00042
Anna M. Krasnow 1, Marc C. Ford , Leonardo E. Valdivia, Stephen W. Wilson and David Attwell (2018)
Regulation of developing myelin sheath elongation by oligodendrocyte calcium transients in vivo.
Nature Neuroscience .doi:10.1038/s41593-017-0031-y
Singh C, Rihel J, and Prober DA (2017).
Neuropeptide Y Regulates Sleep by Modulating Noradrenergic Signaling.
Current Biology, doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2017.11.018
Schoppik D, Bianco IH, Prober DA, Douglass AD, Robson DN, Li JMB, Greenwood JSF, Soucy E, Engert F, Schier AF.(2017)
Gaze-stabilizing central vestibular neurons project asymmetrically to extraocular motoneuron pools.
J Neurosci. pii: 1711-17. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1711-17.2017
Wolf S, Dubreuil AM, Bertoni T, Böhm UL, Bormuth V, Candelier R, Karpenko S, Hildebrand DGC, Bianco IH, Monasson R, Debrégeas G.(2017)
Sensorimotor computation underlying phototaxis in zebrafish.
Nat Commun. 8:651. doi: 10.1038/s41467-017-00310-3.
Hildebrand DGC, Cicconet M, Torres RM, Choi W, Quan TM, Moon J, Wetzel AW, Scott Champion A, Graham BJ, Randlett O, Plummer GS, Portugues R, Bianco IH, Saalfeld S, Baden AD, Lillaney K, Burns R, Vogelstein JT, Schier AF, Lee WA, Jeong WK, Lichtman JW, Engert F. (2017)
Whole-brain serial-section electron microscopy in larval zebrafish.
Nature. doi:10.1038/nature22356
Chen S, Reichert S, Singh C, Oikonomou G, Rihel J*, and Prober DA* (2017).
Light-dependent regulation of sleep/wake states by prokineticin 2 in zebrafish.
Neuron. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2017.06.001. *co-corresponding
Van Lessen M, Shibata-Germanos S, van Impel A, Hawkins TA, Rihel J, and Schulte-Merker S (2017).
Intracellular uptake of macromolecules by brain lymphatic endothelial cells during zebrafish embryonic development.
eLife DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.25932
Barlow IL and Rihel J (2017).
Zebrafish sleep: from geneZZZ to neuronZZZ. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 10.1016/j.conb.2017.02.009
Tube The nearest underground stations are Euston Square, Euston and Warren Street. We are only a few blocks away from any of these stations.
Buses Southbound routes 10, 24, 29, and 73 pass by UCL’s main gate; northbound routes stop at Warren Street station.
1st Floor, Anatomy Building
UCL
Gower Street
WC1E 6BT
tel: 020 3549 5652
email: doreen.bailey@ucl.ac.uk
For information specific to a research group...
Wilson lab s.wilson@ucl.ac.uk
Bianco lab i.bianco@ucl.ac.uk
Tada lab m.tada@ucl.ac.uk
Dreosti lab e.dreosti@ucl.ac.uk
Rihel lab j.rihel@ucl.ac.uk
Alexandre lab p.alexandre@ucl.ac.uk
Hawkins lab t.hawkins@ucl.ac.uk