Annual Zebrafish Husbandry Workshop USA: A Resource for All Zebrafish Users

The 2016 Zebrafish Husbandry Workshop was held at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, February 23rd–24th. Beginning in 2010, the Zebrafish Husbandry Association (ZHA) has been holding its annual meeting immediately preceding the husbandry workshop. The Board of Directors held their official meeting, reviewed the previous year's accomplishments, and then led an open discussion soliciting community feedback regarding how ZHA can best offer support for community goals. After the meeting, lunch was hosted at the Paradis Garden Cafe, offering a casual atmosphere for community members to get to know each other and exchange ideas.

Mark Francis, the President of Aquaneering and founder of the workshop, opened with an introduction followed by brief updates from ZHA (a summary of the annual meeting just convened), Zebrafish International Resource Center (still recovering from a fire that heavily damaged its facility last year), and Gadsden State Community College (both the online and hands-on sessions already have waiting lists for this year!).

For those of you not familiar with the training available through Gadsden State, information is available here: www.gadsdenstate.edu/academics/science/an/zebrafish.php. The courses cover all areas of zebrafish husbandry with training materials developed by and taught by experts in the field.

The workshop proper opened with a 2 h, six-talk session sponsored by the ZHA. Submissions are solicited from the community and peer reviewed for inclusion in the session. The emphasis is on scientifically supported research in husbandry issues. A highlight was a talk by Dante D'India, a Research Assistant at Harvard University titled “Improved Long-Term Imaging of Embryos with Genetically Encoded a-Bungarotoxin.” To be able to achieve long-term in toto imaging of individual cells, fish must be immobilized, but current options have side effects and risks. The use of a-Bungarotoxin has many advantages. It does not impair functioning of the heart and has no apparent effect on future generations.

Many of the talks from the ZHA-sponsored portion of this and previous workshops are posted on their website: http://zhaonline.org

The next 2 h session covered fish diseases. This annually recurring session is organized by Dr. Michael Kent, an investigator at Oregon State University. Statistical requirements of environmental sampling for reliable results, strategies for the control of Pseudoloma, causes of intestinal cancers in zebrafish, and a comparison of the efficacy of chlorine versus heat disinfection were all covered. What becomes clear during this session every year is how challenging achieving and maintaining a specific pathogen free facility is for those facilities with that goal.

The final focused “mini-session” of the workshop was organized around regulatory issues by Monte Matthews, a Certified Professional IACUC Administrator and Director of Animal Care Services at the University of Oregon. Investigators experiencing increasing regulatory burden can certainly relate to the struggles husbandry professionals have faced since the addition of aquatic animals to the 2010 version of the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. It is clear that zebrafish are covered under the new guide, but what is not clear are standards against which laboratories and procedures are to be judged. IACUC and other regulatory bodies have a wide range within which to interpret the new requirements.

In advance of the workshop, a questionnaire was sent out into the community with more than 30 questions on regulatory topics and concerns. More than 100 completed questionnaires were received. The concerns expressed were tallied and the results used as the basis for a panel discussion (and future white paper). The enthusiastic audience participation—with members both asking for help with problems and sharing solutions—led to the session spilling over into lunch time. Although there were significant differences of opinion on many issues, the overall consensus was that the efforts to identify performance-based standards being made by community members, supported by ZHA and individual laboratories, and shared in workshops such as this, are a critical step in achieving understanding and accord with regulatory agencies. This was a compelling session for our audience and we plan to include a similar session next year in San Antonio.

We were honored that Dr. Steve Ekker agreed to be the workshop's keynote speaker this year. Dr. Ekker is a Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Associate Director of the Clinical and Translational Sciences graduate program at The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN (and Editor-in-Chief of Zebrafish Magazine). In addition to discussing “Cure Mapping” using zebrafish—a method to cut down drastically the amount of time required to identify and receive approval for life-saving drugs—he also shared his experience supporting young scientists through the In-Sci-Ed Out program. Many attendees were quite inspired, and approached him after the talk to discuss expanding the program to their facility or city. Typically our keynote is a wonderful chance to reinforce to the husbandry community that, beyond performing the daily husbandry tasks and managing the operation of the housing facilities, our efforts are part of a larger endeavor that is making important advances in medical research.

The last six talks of the workshop covered topics as diverse as embryo disinfection options to restricting the spread of fish disease to supporting zebrafish research through rigorous husbandry. Dr. Steve Watts, a Professor and the Graduate Program Director at the University of Alabama Birmingham, gave a fascinating talk on “Effect of Dietary Protein Source and Quantity on the Growth and Body Composition of Juvenile Danio rerio.” Feed breakdowns are not typically included in the methods section of research articles, yet the source and quantity of protein significantly affect fish adiposity, which could certainly play a role in research results. The final talk, “The State of Laboratory Zebrafish Transport: Flaws, Challenges, and the Path Towards a Sensible Solution” by Christian Lawrence, a fish biologist and Aquatic Program Director at Boston Children's Hospital, discussed the lack of standards for shipping fish and how that results in fish stress and death and hampers the exchange of fish domestically and worldwide. A spirited discussion ensued, as many attendees either had nightmare stories to share or had not thought about this issue at all.

After the workshop, attendees participated in a Town Hall Meeting. The organization of the meeting differs from year to year, sometimes focusing on a special topic, sometimes breaking into small groups to come up with suggested action items for the coming year, and sometimes more like a community free-for-all! This year we seated participants at five large round tables to come up with suggestions for enhancing interaction with and support of zebrafish investigators. Participants on each table reported their proposed action items, ranging from short husbandry-focused “FYI”-type information nuggets in national publications such as Science to offering to invite and sponsor a member of the International Zebrafish Investigator group to audit the workshop and report back to group members and to attending scientific meetings (perhaps a ZHA table) to increase visibility.

One hundred percent of the feedback received about the meeting was positive and the organizers, speakers, and attendees were excited to continue moving forward in our mission to support scientific research through husbandry.

Ultimately, in the science of laboratory animals, as it has happened in other scientific fields, we must overcome… axioms established in the past and which have been proven as scientifically incorrect. We have to rethink in all the forums, national and international, standards for the care and handling of animal models in the experimental procedures, if we want them to be more reproducible and transposable to other animal species, including human.

Juan Martín Caballero DVM, PhD

Director of PCB-PRBB Animal Facilities Barcelona (CompMed post April 26, 2016)