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Rainbow Fish
10 March 2014

Rainbow Fish

One of the greatest mysteries in biology is how living things grow from a single fertilised egg cell into a complex organism. And the biggest challenge facing researchers trying to answer this question is how to spy on individual cells as they grow, multiply and specialise. Help is at hand from a clever genetic engineering system called Brainbow. It makes individual cells in a developing organism switch on unique combinations of red, blue and green fluorescent molecules, 'painting' each one a distinct colour. Scientists have now adapted this system to work in zebrafish, naming it Zebrabow. This striking picture shows the fin on the side of an adult Zebrabow fish – the clusters of cells that are all the same colour grew from the same cell in the embryo. The technique could prove powerful for enabling scientists to track the origins of different tissues, revealing how they form and grow.

Written by Kat Arney

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BPoD stands for Biomedical Picture of the Day. Managed by the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences until Jul 2023, it is now run independently by a dedicated team of scientists and writers. The website aims to engage everyone, young and old, in the wonders of biology, and its influence on medicine. The ever-growing archive of more than 4000 research images documents over a decade of progress. Explore the collection and see what you discover. Images are kindly provided for inclusion on this website through the generosity of scientists across the globe.

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BPoD is also available in Catalan at www.bpod.cat with translations by the University of Valencia.