Newman Morgan, Verdile Giuseppe, Martins Ralph N, Lardelli Michael
Discipline of Genetics, The University of Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia.
Biochim Biophys Acta. 2011 Mar;1812(3):346-52. doi: 10.1016/j.bbadis.2010.09.012. Epub 2010 Oct 12.
Alzheimer's disease is the most prevalent form of neurodegenerative disease. Despite many years of intensive research our understanding of the molecular events leading to this pathology is far from complete. No effective treatments have been defined and questions surround the validity and utility of existing animal models. The zebrafish (and, in particular, its embryos) is a malleable and accessible model possessing a vertebrate neural structure and genome. Zebrafish genes orthologous to those mutated in human familial Alzheimer's disease have been defined. Work in zebrafish has permitted discovery of unique characteristics of these genes that would have been difficult to observe with other models. In this brief review we give an overview of Alzheimer's disease and transgenic animal models before examining the current contribution of zebrafish to this research area. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled Zebrafish Models of Neurological Diseases.
阿尔茨海默病是神经退行性疾病最常见的形式。尽管经过多年深入研究，但我们对导致这种病理状态的分子事件的理解仍远未完善。尚未确定有效的治疗方法，现有动物模型的有效性和实用性也存在诸多疑问。斑马鱼（尤其是其胚胎）是一种具有可塑性且易于研究的模型，拥有脊椎动物的神经结构和基因组。已确定与人类家族性阿尔茨海默病中突变基因直系同源的斑马鱼基因。在斑马鱼身上开展的研究使人们发现了这些基因的独特特性，而用其他模型则难以观察到这些特性。在本简要综述中，我们在审视斑马鱼目前对该研究领域的贡献之前，先对阿尔茨海默病和转基因动物模型进行概述。本文是名为“神经疾病的斑马鱼模型”特刊的一部分。
