May 11, 1998 Contact Ross West (541) 346-2060 Source: Monte Westerfield (541) 346 4607 EUGENE--Researchers at the University of Oregon have been granted $4.3 million by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for an international zebrafish stock center. The funding will pay staff and equipment costs for a period of five years. In addition, $1.5 million in bonding authority has been approved by the state of Oregon for construction of the building to house the center, and another $1 million in construction funding has been requested from NIH to complete the project. "The stock center is a big step forward for biomedical research," explains Monte Westerfield, a member of the UO Institute of Neuroscience and the principal investigator who received the grant. "It will serve as a repository for various strains of living zebrafish as well as for materials used to study development including frozen sperm, DNA and antibody probes. "It will also serve as a repository of knowledge: stock center scientists will maintain a World Wide Web-accessible database of information about zebrafish. And finally," he says, "it will serve as both a training ground for researchers and as a laboratory for some types of preliminary research." Zebrafish are one of the most useful model organisms scientists study in genetic and developmental research. Zebrafish are ideal for lab study because their embryos develop outside the mother and have transparent "eggshells." This combination allows researchers to observe development easily without disturbing it. "Having the national stock center on campus will provide students and faculty with exceptional scientific opportunities because zebrafish will be even more important in genetic and biomedical research in the future," says Steadman Upham, UO vice provost for research. "Locating the stock center at UO is also logical, since our scientists pioneered research techniques with zebrafish and continue to be in the forefront of genetic research on this organism." The University of Oregon has been a worldwide leader in zebrafish research since the late UO researcher George Streisinger first cloned the tiny fish in the late 1970s. Today, five major laboratories at the UO and more than 125 other laboratories in 28 countries use zebrafish for genetic and developmental research. "There are about 7,000 mutant strains of zebrafish scattered around the world, and it is impossible for researchers to keep track of all the information being produced with this important animal," Westerfield says. "The stock center will concentrate, organize and consolidate this information as well as the fish themselves." Design and construction on the 10,000-square-foot building on a site north of Franklin Boulevard and south of the railroad tracks will begin immediately and is expected to take about one year. The center will be equipped like a small-scale research laboratory because many of the mutant strains of zebrafish are identified using DNA, molecular biology and a host of sophisticated techniques. Once construction is complete, the stock center will be staffed with a director and several researchers plus technical and administrative staff. "The center will also provide good opportunities for students to learn," Westerfield notes. "We will be able to provide jobs for students and they will be able to learn important techniques and pick up great lab experience in vertebrate genetics." Westerfield notes that stock centers already exist for other vitally important research animals such as mice and fruit flies. "There is an enormous investment made in research animals because they offer important insights into human health and disease," he says. "Stock centers are required for bigger animals used in genetic research because individual labs don't have the space or resources to house all the strains of animals needed for genetic studies." -30- #G-7347/Local,OrSci,PDX