A Center of a Different Stripe

Abstract

What do tiny black-and-white-striped zebrafish have in common with human beings? As it turns out, quite a lot. The zebrafish and other aquatic model organisms are helping researchers to better understand complex biomedical questions including how humans develop and are affected by toxic exposures. This work is the focus of the and Freshwater Biomedical Sciences Center (MFBSC) at the University of Wisconsin (UW) –Milwaukee, an NIEHS environmental health sciences center. “Most investigators who work with living systems use mammalian species as model systems,” says director David Petering, a professor of chemistry at UW–Milwaukee. “So, up until recently, general toxicologists wondered what in the world aquatic organisms could contribute to the study of environmental health and toxicology. It turns out that, historically, aquatic organisms have been enormously important in the development of biomedical research.” Petering notes, for example, that most of the basic understanding of how nerve impulses are conducted arose from studies of the large nerve axon of the squid. The MFBSC is one of four aquatic research centers funded by the NIEHS. It is located in the Wisconsin Aquatic Technology and Environmental Research (WATER) Institute at UW–Milwaukee. (In addition to UW–Milwaukee faculty, the center draws researchers from several other Wisconsin institutions, including Marquette University, the Medical College of Wisconsin, and UW–Madison.) The center’s genesis dates to the late 1970s, when former NIEHS director David Rall promoted the use of aquatic systems to study human and environmental health issues. The Milwaukee center was the first MFBSC to form. It has since evolved into an advanced aquatic animal facility with laboratories supporting four core research areas: signal transduction and endocrine disruption, metals toxicology and neurotoxicology, the use of zebrafish as a model organism for developmental toxicology, and behavioral toxicology. Additionally, the MFSBC supports a pilot project program, which offers researchers an opportunity to explore the utility of aquatic models in environmental health research and to further develop methods that are already in use.