The COXes of Danio: From mechanistic model to experimental therapeutics

摘要

In a recent issue of PNAS, Grosser et al. (1) report studies that characterize cy- clooxygenase-1 and -2 (zCOX-1 and zCOX-2) in zebrafish (Danio rerio). The importance of their work is that experi- mental systems that can be manipulated genetically have informed many areas of signal transduction, but, until now, studies of the prostaglandin system have largely been performed in mammals. The cre- ation of genetically engineered mice that lack COX-1, COX-2 (2-4), or receptors for prostaglandins (5) has resulted in mul- tiple advances to the field. However, in this case, the zebrafish may prove to be the central model system used to discover genes and molecular mechanisms that reg- ulate developmental pathways.