JOINED AT THE GENES?

摘要

It's always summertime on the third floor of E-17, an otherwise unremarkable brick building at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That's because it houses the "Fish Ritz," a series of 4,000 interconnected tanks that harbor over 100,000 minnow-size, black-striped zebra fish. A team of 8 assistants supervises feedings and checks the water quality and filtration systems. The chatelaine of this establishment, biology professor Nancy H. Hopkins, takes no chances with her animals. She believes these silvery fish will someday help explain the fundamentals of life and human disease. And she is not alone.