Transplantation in zebrafish.

Tissue or cell transplantation has been an extremely valuable technique for studying developmental potential of certain cell population, dissecting cell-environment interaction relationship, identifying stem cells, and many other applications. One key technical requirement for performing transplantation assay is the capability of distinguishing the transplanted donor cells from the endogenous host cells, and tracing the donor cells over time. Zebrafish has emerged as an excellent model organism for performing transplantation assay, thanks to the transparency of embryos during development and even certain adults. Using transgenic techniques and fast-evolving imaging technology, fluorescence-labeled donor cells can be easily identified and studied in vivo. In this chapter, we will first discuss the rationale of different types of zebrafish transplantation in both embryos and adults, and then focus on detailed methods of three types of transplantation: blastula/gastrula transplantation for mosaic analysis, stem cell transplantation, and tumor transplantation.