The Show About Science · Nate | The Company Making Podcasts

The Tiny Zebrafish Hotel with Merlin Lange, Loïc Royer, and Shruthi VijayKumar

·16 min

Host Nate visits the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub in San Francisco for the third installment of its disease research series. He meets Loic Reuer (group leader), Merlin Lange, and Shruti from the Quantitative Cell Sciences project. Their research uses Light Sheet Microscopy and zebrafish embryos to understand how organisms develop from single cells. The episode explains why zebrafish are ideal model organisms (small, easy to breed, transparent embryos) and establishes the profound genetic similarity: 84% of disease-related human genes are found in zebrafish. Loic explains evolutionary conservation—developmental mechanisms invented early in evolution are reused across species. The episode concludes with a tour of the 'zebrafish hotel,' showing red-fluorescent and transparent genetically-engineered fish used in research.

As heard by us

A zebrafish lab tour that makes development visible through fluorescence.

The episode traces a zebrafish lab from a single cell view to the bigger question of how an embryo and its organs take shape. A tour of genetically modified zebrafish keeps the science grounded instead of abstract.

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Why you'd press play

Want to watch a zebrafish become a living map of development?

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