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Essay / Benefits of Zebrafish - 1986
The development of the heart is a complex process that involves the specification and differentiation of cells, including the formation, shaping and alteration of tissues, to create a functional organ . Zebrafish has emerged as a potential model system for unraveling fundamental genetic, molecular, and cellular mechanisms of cardiac development and function. The liver is one of the essential organs of mammals. It performs many functions such as helping the body digest food, store energy and eliminate poisons. The liver also performs many regulatory functions essential to fetal development and life in general. However, failure to perform these functions can lead to many liver diseases in mammals. Hepatomegaly is a symptom associated with several liver disorders. Surveys have shown that a large number of deaths in the United States are caused by chronic liver disease. Liver cancer is another type of liver disease that is one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths worldwide. In recent decades, zebrafish have been used as an experimental model to study liver diseases in humans due to their ability to study vertebrate development. . There are many advantages to using zebrafish to study human diseases and using embryos to develop models of liver disease. First, zebrafish has many advantages, such as genetics and embryology, and embryonic hematopoiesis does not localize in the liver as it does in mammals. Therefore, mutants that have liver size or structure will not have the confusing phenotype of hematopoietic dysfunction. Second, the zebrafish embryo takes about 3-4 days to develop and survives on yolk. After the developmental period, the digestive system of embryonic fish is fully functional... middle of paper ...... monkey formation, movement of cardiac progenitor cells, heart tube and heart function. Further development of more specific tests and advanced genetic screening efforts will provide new insights into cardiac development in the years to come. Additionally, due to the distinct characteristics of zebrafish and its similarities to vertebrae, zebrafish may become the preferred model organism for many researchers to study many mammalian organs. Recently, zebrafish have been used to study the mechanisms underlying human heart and liver diseases and to model inherited and developed heart diseases in humans. Due to increasing sequencing efforts, there is growing interest in the study of human liver and heart diseases. Additionally, increased resources and greater availability of the zebrafish model used by clinical and basic researchers involved in the study of liver, as well as heart disease.