The“establishment of a large-scale zebrafish targeted mutant library”, conducted by IHB, was displayed at the first exhibition board of biotechnology-related achievements. (Credit: IHB)

The National "Thirteenth Five-Year" Science and Technology Innovation Achievement Exhibition was held at Beijing Exhibition Center from October 21st to 27th, 2021. The exhibition focused on displaying the major scientific and technological achievements made during the "13th Five-Year Plan".    

As one of the major achievements of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the“establishment of a large-scale zebrafish targeted mutant library”, conducted by the Institute of Hydrobiology (IHB) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences with independent intellectual property rights, was displayed at the basic research exhibition area and included in the first exhibition board of biotechnology-related achievements.    

This achievement is the first large-scale zebrafish mutagenesis and genetic screening project based on the approach of reverse genetics, and represent the development direction of international zebrafish research.   

In early 2013, a new generation of gene editing technology - CRISPR/Cas9 came out. As a result of six years unremitting efforts, the China Zebrafish Resource Center (CZRC), affiliated with the National Aquatic Biological Resource Center (NABRC), collaborated with over 30 laboratories nationwide, and completed the zebrafish all-gene knockout project on Chromosome 1, thus building China’s first large-scale zebrafish targeted mutant library, and achieving systematic knockout of a single chromosome in vertebrates for the first time.   

At present, all generated mutants and genotype information are available online at http://www.zfish.cn/TargetList.aspx        

Zebrafish is an important animal model in modern life sciences, health sciences and environmental sciences. Although China's zebrafish research started relatively late, it has achieved rapid development in the past 10 years after the establishment of the CZRC. In 2020, Chinese scientists produced more than 29% of all research output in the world, making it the largest nation in terms of output.   

In the same exhibition area, the achievement “Development of time and tissue-specific tracer in vivo and gene knock-in system: Bi-FoRe”, hosted by Prof. SUN Yonghua, director of the CZRC, was displayed.  

Beijing Exhibition Center (Credit: IHB)