If you grew up watching Finding Nemo and treasuring little colourful fish in your home mini aquarium, I have very cool news for you. Scientists have now found a way to color small fish like organisms with thousands of fluorescent colors – one for each cell in the fish’s outer body. These creatures known as zebrafish, are unique organisms because their bodies are translucent. When all the skin cells in these creatures are colored differently from their neighboring cells, it gives the appearance of a beautiful rainbow mosaic pattern, which researchers call ‘skinbow’.

But how are these colorful little creatures relevant in scientific discovery? It turns out that labelling each cell in the zebrafish with a different color, allows researchers to study skin behavior especially in cases of injuries. What this means is that using this innovative technique, scientists can now look at how skin recovers and regenerates with time, after it is wounded. “An open question in the developmental biology field is how tissues replace lost cells during wound repair/regeneration; this study directly addresses this question and provides a tool for use in future studies of tissue regeneration”, says Lindsay Theodore, a graduate student at Harvard University. Lindsay adds that the technique also “can contribute to our understanding of the population dynamics of large numbers of cells within a tissue”. Before moving forward however, Lindsay points out that there are issues that may need to be addressed, such as controlling for the effects of anesthesia and laser light exposure, both of which were used on the zebrafish in the study.

Despite these minor considerations, we can all appreciate that this technique allows us to visualize biological processes at the single cell level while leaving the scope for studying populations of cells within specific tissues. The fact that researchers found a way to do this with thousands of colors makes it all the more appealing!

Acknowledgements: Many thanks to Lindsay Theodore for her insight and comments on the story. Lindsay is a graduate student in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences program at the Harvard Medical School.

Managing correspondent: Utsarga Adhikary

Cover image was designed by Utsarga Adhikary

Original Article: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1534580716300727

Commentary: http://www.nature.com/news/transgenic-zebrafish-forms-technicolour-skinbow-1.19615

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