Hemostasis in Danio rerio: is the zebrafish a useful model for platelet research?

New scientific models have been established in the past few years to identify novel factors of hemostasis and thrombosis and to analyze their function in greater detail. One fairly new animal model is the zebrafish, Danio rerio, which shares most of the central factors of platelet adhesion, activation, aggregation and release reaction with humans. Examples include GPIIb-IIIa, many other integrins, coagulation factors, inflammatory and cytokine-like proteins as well as arachidonic acid metabolism enzymes. Yet the zebrafish genome has undergone a teleost-specific genome duplication, causing the existence of duplicated paralogues in some instances, and a few genes have not been identified in the zebrafish genome. Taken together the high fecundity of the zebrafish, the possibility to observe transparent developing embryos in real time, the availability of a large number of mutants and transgenics as well as the possibility to knock down gene function by microinjection of morpholino antisense oligonucleotides and the similarity of the hemostatic system are important assets of the zebrafish, promising that it will be an attractive model to study thrombocyte function, thrombosis and hemostasis. This review provides an overview of the central factors of thrombocyte function identified so far in the zebrafish genome and a compilation of methods and tools available for the study of thrombocyte development and function in zebrafish.