History of the experiment

In the 2001-02 academic year, the Zebrafish Project was started at Sidwell Friends as an independent research project for a Biology I class. The goal of this project was to start a zebrafish colony at Sidwell, and to investigate various mutations that can affect the development of zebrafish notochords. The adult fish received did not mate, and the received embryos died, so the colony part was mostly a failure. However, the research and observations of different mutations went quite well. Mostly, the focus was on the spadetail and floating head mutations. A man-made developmental aberration was also observed. This was caused by treatment of zebrafish with lithium chloride (LiCl) during their very early development. The notochord was affected by this, and other effects were similar to those created by a mutation in a hedgehog gene.