Engineers at MIT have now built an automated system that can
rapidly produce 3D, micron-resolution images of thousands of
zebrafish larvae and precisely analyze their physical traits.
The system, described in Nature Communications, offers a
comprehensive view of how potential drugs affect vertebrates,
says Mehmet Fatih Yanik, senior author of the paper. “Complex
processes involving organs cannot be accurately recapitulated in
cell culture today. Existing 3D tissue models are still far too
simple to model live animals,” says Yanik, an MIT associate
professor of electrical engineering and computer science and
biological engineering. “In whole animals, the biology is far
more complicated.” Lead authors of the paper are MIT graduate
student Carlos Pardo-Martin and Amin Allalou, a visiting student
at MIT. Other authors are MIT senior research scientist Peter
Eimon, MIT intern Jaime Medina, and Carolina Wahlby of the Broad
Institute. Zebrafish are genetically similar to humans and have
many of the same developmenta