Chinese Researchers Develop New Technology for Zebrafish Semi-Cloning

Beijing (ANTARA) - Chinese researchers have developed a new technology for the semi-cloning of zebrafish, according to a recent research article published in the journal Cell Research.

Semi-cloning is a unique approach to producing individual animals, while zebrafish serve as a primary model organism for studying vertebrate development and diseases.

According to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), existing technologies possess weaknesses or limited performance. Consequently, the efficient and rapid creation of gene-edited zebrafish models has long been one of the major constraints in this field.

Researchers from the CAS Center of Excellence in Molecular Cell Science utilised fresh haploid blastula cells at the blastula stage to produce fertile semi-cloned zebrafish. Once optimised, the success rate increased to approximately 30 per cent.

Based on the transfer of haploid blastocyst nuclei, this technology produces semi-cloned zebrafish with uniform characteristics. By performing multiple gene editing on haploid embryos, this technology enables the creation of donor cells with various combinations of genotypes in a single stage, as well as producing both male and female semi-cloned zebrafish.

These findings make the semi-cloning system a valuable platform for the genetic analysis of zebrafish, according to CAS.