Zebrafish: A Practical Approach. Edited by C. NÜSSLEIN-VOLHARD and R. DAHM. Oxford University Press. 2002. 322 pages. ISBN 0 19 963808 X. Price £40.00 (paperback). ISBN 0 19 963809 8. Price £80.00 (hardback).

Use of the zebrafish as a model organism for laboratory research has transformed our understanding of the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying vertebrate development. This book impressively describes how to combine classical genetic analysis in this organism with techniques for molecular analysis of gene function and experimental manipulation of embryos, in a way that is sure to inspire an expanding community of scientists to exploit the zebrafish system in their research. Zebrafish embryos are optically clear and develop rapidly. Moreover, the generation time of this tropical fish is short and adults can be maintained at high density in laboratory aquaria. These features, together with the fact that germ cells can be efficiently mutagenized using either chemical or retroviral mutagens, make zebrafish particularly amenable to large-scale forward genetic screens. Phage geneticist George Streisinger and his colleagues first exploited the advantages of working with this organism and established techniques for laboratory research using zebrafish during the 1970s and 1980s. In the early 1990s, C. Nüsslein-Volhard and W. Driever vastly expanded the scope of studies with this organism when their groups pioneered largescale, systematic genetic screens that yielded mutant collections of an astonishing depth, breadth and quality, giving myriad insights into the genetic control of developmental processes. This book now builds on the methodological principles established by these groundbreaking investigations to provide a comprehensive, up-to-date manual for laboratory work with zebrafish. The book comprises an introduction, together with seven main technical chapters and three appendices. This organisation is logical, useful and further augmented by an extensive Index. Chapter topics include how to set up a zebrafish facility, how to stock it with interesting strains and maintain them, and then how to analyse mutant phenotypes and genotypes, clone genes and design genetic screens to identify novel mutations. Each chapter has been written by one or more zebrafish researchers with particular expertise in the topic under review, and each contains many neatly formatted protocols that make the book very easy to use at the bench. The uniformly lucid text is richly illustrated throughout with high quality black and white photographs and line drawings that add valuable information, and a collection of colour plates is also provided to illustrate key technical points or to provide interpretable examples of experimental results. Whilst the power of classical genetic analysis in zebrafish is a dominant theme reinforced by many of the chapters in this book, I particularly enjoyed Chapter 4 by Kane and Kishimoto, which elegantly explains how to exploit zebrafish for lineage tracing and other studies of cell fate using modern experimental embryological techniques. Such experiments are frequently required for gene function analysis in vivo and the authors explain how they can best be tackled in zebrafish. Another fascinating section of the book is Chapter 5 by Gilmour, Jessen and Lin, which explains how to experimentallymanipulate gene expression using knock-down approaches with modified oligonucleotides, transient gain-of-function experiments with microinjected mRNAs and plasmids, as well as stable transgenesis using small plasmid and modified BAC clones. The appendices include an extremely useful and beautifully illustrated atlas of embryonic development, and a Table that summarizes the characteristics of more than 700 known mutations. As more than 80% of these mutated genes still remain to be cloned, future studies with these mutants promise to yield many fascinating new insights into the molecular and cellular mechanisms that regulate embryonic development. Although this book will find its greatest following in the developmental biology community, it is likely to enjoy an ever-widening readership in the coming years, as the vast potential of zebrafish for dissecting physiological functions and understanding human disease processes is realised. V INCENT T. CUNL IFFE Centre for Developmental Genetics University of Sheffield Genet. Res., Camb. (2003), 82, pp. 79–83. f 2003 Cambridge University Press 79 Printed in the United Kingdom