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Rare Minnoe:A New Laboratory Animal in China
- CAO Wen xuan,WANG Jian wei
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2003, 20(S1):
96-99.
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Asbtract
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As representative member of low class vertebrate and aquatic ecosystem, fishes have high breeding ability with eggs external tertilized and transparent embryos developing synchronously outside the mother. They are used in researches of embryology, enetics, aquatic toxicology, behavioral science and environmental science.Ever since George using experimental gynogenesis method was published in nature in 1981,zebra fish, medaka and other fishes became favorite laboratory animals and played more and more important roles in the studies of genetics and environmental science. In 1990s,Chinese researchers began studying on rare minnow, swordtail, red crucian carp and other fishes as laboratory animals; consequently, a professional subgroup of Chinese Association for Laboratory Animal Sciences named Society of Experimental Aquatic Animal was set up in 2001 to promote researcher in this area. Rare minnow, Gobiocypris rarus , is a small cyprinid fish. Distributing in Hanyuan, Shimian Shuangliu, Dqjiangyan, Pengzhou County in Sichuan province, it is one of the endemic fishes in west China. In order to use rare minnow as laboratory animal, scientists of Institute of Hydrobiology belonging to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)have done a series of investigation from1990.These works refer to its geographical distribution, habitat, morphology, taxonomy, reproduction, ontogenesis, growth,food,semitiviqto ecological factors, karyotype, isozymes, breed and care, anaesthesia,production of inbred strain, and soon. Rare minnow has been inbred to 20th generation at present, and guidelines for the laboratory culture and care of the fish have been made. This implies the time we produce and use rare minnow as standard animal model is near. As a new laboratory animal, rare minnow has the flowing attributes:(1) The ash is small with adult total length 38 to 85mm,and it is easy to care for.(2) Some individuals get mature when they are 3 months old under favorite culture, and can spawn when they are 4 months old. The generation time is only 4 months.(3) Spawning occurs when water temperature ranges from 14 to 30 degree of centigrade, thus it is easy to obtain eggs in my season in the laboratory.(4) Rare minnow is a continuous batch spawner. Mature females lay several hundred eggs at interval of a few days (mode 4days). This ensures researchers can get large number of eggs spawn by the same female in a shod period.(5) The eggs are adherent and transparent with diameter 1.25 to 1.70mm, which are larger than eggs of zebra fish or medaka. Embryogenensis and organogenesis can be monitored microscopically, and it is feasible to transplant nuclear or othertechnical operate.(6) Development is normal between 13 and 30 degree of centigrade.It is possible to control the speed of ontogenesis by adjusting temperature.(7)The fish has high adaptability to temperature, high CO 2 and low dissolved oxygen. There are 51 literatures on rare minnow presently. Eighteen of them are about biological background or taxonomy, and the other thirty three are papers about using this fish as experimental animal. In complete statistic shows rare minnow has been used in studies on fish disease, genetics, environmental science, embryology, physiology and ecology in more than 10 universities or research institutions in China. Wang Tiehui et al proved that rare minnow is susceptible to Hemorrhagic Virus of Grass Carp (GCHV)L ,suggested the ash may serve as a model of the virus resistance breeding of grass carp 3 with biotechnique methods. Using rare minnow as experimental fish instead of grass carp, investigators overcomes the difficulties brought by big body size, long generation time, short reproductive season, hard to care for and discommodious to obtain research materials, and hence it accelerates the course of the virus resistance breeding. In environmental science research area, many experiments indicated that rare minnow is a suitable test organism for determining toxicity of chemicals and water samples because the fish is very sensitive to heavy metals, pestici
