Who knew? That zebrafish had lymphatic vessels in their brains?
Not me.
If that’s not sufficiently surprising, then you might also be surprised that the US Postal Service has printed a new panel of collectable stamps — ‘Forever’ stamps — that feature microscopic images of various plants and animals, including the skull of a particular juvenile zebrafish and the lymphatic system in his (or her) brain, shown in fluorescent colors.
The colorful fish image was provided to the USPS by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the same folks who funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology to the tune of $9 million, to study bat coronaviruses.
That coronavirus funding has been canceled, by the way.
I haven’t yet found out how much NIH has spent studying zebrafish brains. Maybe a few million? But I imagine the research is relatively harmless. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting “basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. ”
Apparently, no one knew, until this particular juvenile fish had its brain scanned with an electron microscope, that zebrafish had lymphatic vessels in their brains. But now we do, thankfully.
The zebrafish stamp is one of 20 stamps included in the USPS “Life Magnified” panel.
According to the USPS website, the stamp illustrations also include the tongue of a freshwater snail, and the legs of a barnacle. Yes, I was certainly surprised to find out about the zebrafish lymphatic vessels, but also, that snails have tongues. And that barnacles have legs.
So many surprises. Even the NIH scientists were surprised by the zebrafish brain images.
From the NIH website:
“Zebrafish are used as a model for typical and atypical human development. It is surprising how much we have in common with zebrafish,” said Diana W. Bianchi, director of NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), which generated the image. “NIH research affects our lives every day. My hope is that this postage stamp will help spur conversations and appreciation for the importance of basic science research.”
Lymphatic vessels were previously thought to occur only in mammal brains, and “their discovery in fish could expedite and revolutionize research related to treatments for diseases that occur in the human brain, including cancer and Alzheimer’s.”
Which suggests, perhaps, that zebrafish also suffer from Alzheimer’s.
The zebrafish included in the USPS stamp panel was, as mentioned, a juvenile. So it probably didn’t have Alzheimer’s. But I have to wonder how the NIH scientists would determine that a zebrafish (presumably a much older zebrafish) was suffering from Alzheimer’s.
A juvenile zebrafish is probably more likely to have a drug addiction problem. Or gender identification issues.
As the NIH director mentioned, we have a lot in common with zebrafish. Lymphatic vessels are only the tip of the iceberg.
Size is not one of the things we have in common, however. A full-grown zebrafish is about 2 inches long. In a published 2015 study, certain individuals showed a capacity to remember context with respect to objects, locations and occasions (what, when, where). Obviously, these were not ‘senior citizen’ zebrafish.
I understand that NIH is primarily concerned with researching diseases and medical cures. That’s what we pay them the big buck to do. But I wonder if zebrafish are similar enough to humans, that we could learn other things from them. Like, for example, how to get along with other people, even if they are Texans. A lot of us have been wondering about that, lately.
For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.