Genetic and genomic tools for zebrafish research: the NIH zebrafish initiative.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been a leading advocate of the zebrafish as a model organism for the study of vertebrate development, physiology, and disease. Genomic tools, developed with the support of NIH funding, have made zebrafish even more attractive as a genetic system and have stimulated research using this model. The NIH continues to provide support for new and existing community resources, such as the Zebrafish International Resource Center and the Zebrafish Information Network, research tool development and mutant screens, and a wide array of investigator-initiated studies that are using zebrafish to elucidate many aspects of vertebrate biology.