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Rob Wilkinson is a developmental biologist working on the genetic mechanisms which regulate the formation and function of blood vessels.
“We use zebrafish to understand how blood vessel leakiness is controlled since we can label blood vessels fluorescently. This allows us to observe vessel leakiness in a living organism. Importantly, zebrafish and humans share many of the signals and mechanisms which control blood vessel leakiness. We also use an emerging animal model, the glassfish Danionella cerebrum. These tiny fish have the smallest known vertebrate brain at 0.6mm3, but what makes them unique is that they develop without a skull roof. This allows us to image the adult brain non-invasively through the life of the organism and allows us to study the function of the blood vessels within an adult vertebrate brain without performing surgery. Our colony of Danionella cerebrum has its own Active Blue standalone system”.
Most of our research throughout my career has been performed using Tecniplast aquatic systems. I have used Tecniplast products for over 15 years and have found them to be the most reliable for fish husbandry.
We conducted a controlled trial raising zebrafish embryos of different zebrafish lines on a 25 year old Marine Biotech system, where our survival rates had been falling to worryingly low levels. We purchased a Zebtec Active blue, established the biofilter and began raising genetically identical clutches of embryos on each system and monitored growth and survival. Across the lines studied, our mean survival was only 27% on the marine biotech system, yet on the Tecniplast system with embryos receiving the same diet and identical stocking density, the survival was 75%, an almost 3-fold increase. The growth rate was markedly different with animals raised on the standalone system reaching sexual maturity 2 months faster than those raised on the Marine Biotech system. This comparison obviously demonstrates the suboptimality of our old system in terms of facilitating effective zebrafish husbandry and the advances made with the Zebtec Active blue. We only have anecdotal data for the sloped breeding tanks, but we use these if zebrafish haven’t been used for a period of time, or if we have been unsuccessful in obtaining embryos after a few attempts of pair mating. We use a maximum of 3 pairs in the tank and we find this gives us the best chance of obtaining embryos. We also find using the sloped breeding tanks tends to produce more embryos with 3 pairs than if we had added marbles to a larger tank of fish. Presumably because it reduces the likelihood of dominant animals preventing others from breeding.
All I can say about the palletised CLS is that the install was outstanding, despite the obstacles TP engineers had to overcome i.e inaccurate drawings provided by our estates department which didn’t take into consideration a 40mm reduction in room diameter on each wall due to insulation which was not accounted for in the drawings and this necessitated a last minute redesign.
The palletised system is incredibly easy to maintain so far, it is holding temperature and I cannot wait to move our animals in.
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