Institute of Translational Biomedicine, St. Petersburg State University, 199034 St. Petersburg, Russia.
Neurobiology Program, Sirius University of Science and Technology, 354340 Sochi, Russia.
Int J Mol Sci. 2023 Feb 6;24(4):3187. doi: 10.3390/ijms24043187.
Psychiatric disorders are highly prevalent brain pathologies that represent an urgent, unmet biomedical problem. Since reliable clinical diagnoses are essential for the treatment of psychiatric disorders, their animal models with robust, relevant behavioral and physiological endpoints become necessary. Zebrafish () display well-defined, complex behaviors in major neurobehavioral domains which are evolutionarily conserved and strikingly parallel to those seen in rodents and humans. Although zebrafish are increasingly often used to model psychiatric disorders, there are also multiple challenges with such models as well. The field may therefore benefit from a balanced, disease-oriented discussion that considers the clinical prevalence, the pathological complexity, and societal importance of the disorders in question, and the extent of its detalization in zebrafish central nervous system (CNS) studies. Here, we critically discuss the use of zebrafish for modeling human psychiatric disorders in general, and highlight the topics for further in-depth consideration, in order to foster and (re)focus translational biological neuroscience research utilizing zebrafish. Recent developments in molecular biology research utilizing this model species have also been summarized here, collectively calling for a wider use of zebrafish in translational CNS disease modeling.
精神障碍是高度普遍的脑部疾病，代表着一个紧迫的、尚未满足的生物医学问题。由于可靠的临床诊断对于精神障碍的治疗至关重要，因此需要具有可靠、相关的行为和生理终点的动物模型。斑马鱼（）在主要神经行为领域表现出明确的、复杂的行为，这些行为在进化上是保守的，与啮齿动物和人类的行为非常相似。尽管斑马鱼越来越多地被用于模拟精神障碍，但这些模型也存在多种挑战。因此，该领域可能受益于一个平衡的、面向疾病的讨论，该讨论考虑了所讨论疾病的临床流行程度、病理复杂性和社会重要性，以及其在斑马鱼中枢神经系统（CNS）研究中的详细程度。在这里，我们批判性地讨论了一般情况下使用斑马鱼来模拟人类精神障碍的情况，并强调了进一步深入考虑的主题，以促进和（重新）聚焦利用斑马鱼进行转化性生物神经科学研究。这里还总结了利用这种模式生物进行分子生物学研究的最新进展，共同呼吁更广泛地将斑马鱼用于转化性中枢神经系统疾病建模。
