A facility worth millions for fancy fish

Its location is classified. It costs millions of dollars.

And its inhabitants are less than two inches long.

The University's Board of Trustees granted about $1.6 million last week to expand the School of Medicine's zebrafish facilities, hundreds of tanks that house thousands of fish - at an undisclosed location.

Researchers from the Biology Department depend on these aquatic creatures for studying genetics, and the money will go to expanding their facilities.

But who knew they were so high security?

"I can't tell you where [the facility] is," said postdoctoral fellow Harry Burgess, who works in the Biology Department. "You could be some crazy animal rights activist and want to blow it up."

Susan Phillips - chief of staff Dean's Office for the Medical School - cited "animal safety" in refusing to divulge the location of the facility, stressing the need to protect the tiny vertebrates.

But researchers said they sure are happy to give the fish a $1.6 million housing upgrade.

The current tanks were built in the last 10 years, Phillips said, so Medical School administrators sent a budget proposal to the trustees that outlined the new construction.

"There are always many requests for resources," Phillips said. "But this expansion is part of our regular capital plan."

The construction process will be complete within six to nine months, she added.

The facility will undergo renovation because more and more researchers want to study the fish, which have the characteristic stripes of a zebra but a body plan comparable to a human's, experts say.

"The zebrafish is particularly useful because we can manipulate its genome and induce mutations," Harvard biology professor John Dowling said.

According to Dowling, zebrafish reproduce and develop quickly, meaning scientists can get answers faster than they can using other species.

Research on the zebrafish began in the late 1980s, Dowling said, but it wasn't until the early 1990s that researchers realized the creature's potential for genetic research.

What fascinates researchers most, they say, are the similarities between the fish and humans. But zebrafish seem to be much more biologically efficient.

"A human might require 10,000 brain cells for a certain function," Burgess explained. "A zebrafish can do the same thing with only two."

So researchers want more of the maximum-security fish.

Schools and research centers all over the country are seeking increased funding for zebrafish, eager to conduct experiments and perhaps find a new gene or two that could potentially match those in humans, Dowling said.

"People are really interested in them right now," Burgess said. "Zebrafish are the new lab rat."

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