Researchers Explain The Potential Of Zebra Fish As A Medicine For Several Diseases

JAKARTA - Researchers explained the potential use of zebrafish as research material for various diseases at an international webinar, Monday.

The webinar was held by the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences (FMIPA) of Hassanudin University (Unhas) Makassar, South Sulawesi.

Vice-Chancellor for Research, Innovation, and Partnerships Unhas Prof. dr Muh. Nasrum Massi, Ph.D., SpMK, said that among researchers, zebrafish (zebrafish) is indeed widely used as research test materials.

"Fish embryos that are transparent and develop outside the mother's body can help researchers or scientists manipulate genes to resemble human diseases and observe changes in disease firsthand," said Prof Nasrum, quoted by Antara, Monday, December 6.

Meanwhile, Dean-Faculty of Biological Sciences Nitte University India Dr. Anirban Chakraborty, said zebrafish is a species of fish from the cyprinide family with a body size of about 3-5 centimeters. This fish lives in calm waters with sandy, silty, and sandy soil surfaces. or gravel in rice fields, wetlands, and aquariums. He explains, its transparent shape helps scientists study the vascular system and other systems by incorporating fluorescence.

In its brain were found unexpected scavenging cells, which got rid of waste. Such cells can occur in humans and can be controlled, which is useful against dementia and stroke.

So far, zebrafish research has yielded knowledge about cancer, diabetes, muscle disease, and more. The striped little swimmer has great potential to advance medical research in the future.

According to him, there are several things that make this fish a choice in research, including small size, embryonic transparency, rapid ex-utero development, and genome manipulation tools," he said.

"This fish has potential as an alternative and preferred vertebrate model for biologists, toxicologists, pharmacologists.

Despite these limitations, zebrafish can effectively complement other mammalian and non-mammal model systems."