Chinese Researchers Develop New Technology for Zebrafish Semi-Cloning

Chinese researchers have developed a new technology for semi-cloning in zebrafish, according to a recent research article published in the journal Cell Research. Semi-cloning is a unique approach to generating animal individuals, while the zebrafish is a key model organism for studying vertebrate development and disease. According to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), existing technologies have shortcomings or limited performance. Consequently, the efficient and rapid creation of gene-edited zebrafish models has long been a major bottleneck in the field. Researchers from the CAS Center for Excellence in Molecular Cell Science used fresh haploid blastula cells at the blastula stage to generate fertile semi-cloned zebrafish. After optimisation, the success rate increased to approximately 30 percent. Based on haploid blastocyst nuclear transfer, this technology produces semi-cloned zebrafish with uniform traits. By performing multiple gene edits on haploid embryos, the technology enables the creation of donor cells with various genotype combinations in a single step and produces both male and female semi-cloned zebrafish. The findings establish the semi-cloning system as a valuable platform for zebrafish genetic analysis, according to CAS.