Gone Fishing

Researchers have conducted several recent studies using zebrafish models to uncover novel elements in human melanoma. In the current study, Ceol and colleagues engineered a strain of zebra fish with constitutively active BRAF(V600E) but null for p53 and mitfa, and used this strain to screen for analogous human genes that accelerate the formation of melanomas. Because chromosome 1q21 is a common region of amplification in humans, the authors systematically introduced all genes within this region into the fish.

One gene, SETDB1, enhanced tumor formation in the zebrafish. SETDB1 expresses a histone methyltransferase that suppresses the expression of genes by a sophisticated technique termed chromatin immunoprecipitation. Thus, in theory, high l…