Department of Biological Sciences

Research area:
Zebrafish developmental biology, transgenic fish, fish genomics, fish toxicology and biomonitoring.

Research Interests:

Zebrafish molecular developmental biology
Our laboratory has used the zebrafish (Danio rerio) to investigate development of endodermal organs, including the liver, pancreas, intestine and swimbladder. We are interested in differentiation and transdifferentiation of liver and exocrine pancreas, differentiation and migration of intestinal stem cells, comparative studies of fish swimbladder and mammalian lung, etc.

Living color transgenic fish

In the past few years, we have generated many stable transgenic zebrafish lines to express living color reporter genes (e.g. GFP or dsRed) under tissue-specific promoters. These transgenic zebrafish not only provided a powerful tool in developmental analyses of organ development, but also demonstrated the feasibility of generating novel varieties of ornamental fish. Some of our transgenic zebrafish (GloFish) have been commercialized as the world first genetically modified pet. Currently, we are also using the transgenic technology to generate biomonitoring fish for environmental pollution.

Fish genomics
Our laboratory was a pioneer in the zebrafish EST project. In the past few years, we have cloned a few thousand zebrafish cDNAs from several cDNA libraries. By collaboration with scientists from Genome Institute of Singapore, we have set up the zebrafish DNA microarray technology and we are now actively using the platform technology to investigate transcriptome profile and pathways of zebrafish development and carcinogenesis.

Fish toxicogenomics and biomonitoring
We are interested in use of both the zebrafish and Japanese medaka (Oryzias latipes) to develop tools for monitoring environmental pollution. We are developing three different molecular methods: one is to measure, by real-time RT-PCR, the change of mRNA of some marker genes that respond to environmental pollutants such as heavy metals and estrogenic disrupters; the second is to generate transgenic fish using inducible promoters from the marker genes fused to a color protein gene; and the third is to develop a toxiconomical DNA chip to identify finger-print patterns of gene expression associated to each type of pollutants. The long-term goal is to identify fish genes involved in the response to environmental changes and thus to understand the molecular mechanism of toxicity in fish.

Lam, SH, Mathavan S, Tong Y, Li H, Karuturi RKM, Wu YL, Vega VB, Liu ET and Gong Z. (2008) Zebrafish Whole-Adult-Organism Chemogenomics for Large-Scale Predictive and Discovery Chemical Biology. PLOS Genetics. 4:e1000121.
Farooq M, Sulochana KN, Pan X, To J, Sheng D, Gong Z, Ge R. (2008) Histone deacetylase 3 (hdac3) is specifically required for liver development in zebrafish. Dev Biol. 317:336-353.
Dong, P.D.S., C.A. Munson, W. Norton, C. Crosiner, X. Pan, Z. Gong, C.J. Neumann and D.Y.R. Stainier (2007) Fgf10 regulates hepatopancreatic ductal system patterning and differentiation. Nature Genetics 39:397-402.
Song, J., H.J. Kim, Z. Gong, N.-A. Liu and S. Lin (2007) Vhnf1 acts downstream of Bmp, Fgf, and RA signals to regulate endocrine beta cell development in zebrafish. Dev. Biol. 303:561-575.
Zhu, S., L. Liu, V. Korzh, Z. Gong and B.C. Low (2007) RhoA prevents apoptosis during zebrafish embryogenesis through activation of Mek/Erk pathway. Oncogene. 27:1580-1589..
Li. Z., V. Korzh and Z. Gong (2007) Localized rbp4 expression in the yolk syncytial layer plays a role in yolk cell extension and early liver development. BMC Dev Biol. 7:117 [Epub ahead of print].
Lam, S.H, Y.L. Wu, V.B. Vega, L.D. Miller, J. Spitsbergen, Y. Tong, H. Zhan, K. R. Govind a rajan, S. Lee, S. Mathavan, D.R. Buhler, E.T. Liu, and Z. Gong (2006) Conservation of gene expression signatures between zebrafish and human liver tumors and tumor progression. Nature Biotechnology 24: 73-75.
Lam, S.H. and Z. Gong (2006) Modelling Liver Cancer Using Zebrafish: A Comparative Oncogenomics Approach. Cell Cycle 5:573-577.
Lam, S.H., C.L. Winata, Y. Tong, S. Korzh, W.S. Lim, V. Korzh, J. Spitisbergan, S. Mathavan, L.D. Miller, E.T. Liu and Z. Gong (2006) Trancriptome Kinetics of Arsenic-induced Adaptive Response in Zebrafish Liver. Physilogical Genomics. 27:351-361.
Tay, T.L, Q. Lin, T. K. Seow, K. H. Tan, C. L. Hew and Z. Gong (2006) Proteomic analysis of protein profiles during early development of the zebrafish, Danio rerio. Proteomics, 6:3176-3188.
Wan, H., S. Korzh, Z, Li, S.P. Mudumana, V. Korzh Y.-J. Jiang, S. Lin and Z. Gong (2006) Analyses of pancreas development by generation of gfp transgenic zebrafish using an exocrine pancreas-specific elastaseA gene promoter. Exp. Cell Res. 312:1526-1539.
Lam, S.H., C.L. Winata, Y. Tong, S. Mathavan, L.D. Miller, E.T. Liu and Z. Gong (2006) Trancriptome Kinetics of Arsenic-induced Adaptive Response in Zebrafish Liver. Physilogical Genomics. In press.
Zeng, Z., T. Shan, Y. Tong, S.H. Lam and Z. Gong (2005) Development of estrogen-responsive transgenic medaka for environmental monitoring of endocrine disrupters. Env. Sci. Tech. 39:9001-9008.
Mathavan, S., S.G.P. Lee, A, Mak, L.D. Miller, K.R.K. Murthy, K.R. Govindarajan, Y. Tong, Y.L. Wu, S.H. Lam, H. Yang , Y. Ruan, V. Korzh, Z. Gong , E.T. Liu and T. Lufkin (2005) Transcriptome analysis of zebrafish embryogenesis using microarrays. PloS Genetics 1: 260-276.
Gong, Z ., H. Wan, T.L. Tay, H. Wang, M. Chen and T. Yan (2003) Development of transgenic fish for ornamental and bioreactor by strong expression of fluorescent proteins in the skeletal muscle. Biochem. Biophys. Res Comm. 388:58-63.
Zeng, S. and Gong, Z. (2002) EST analysis of expression profiles of zebrafish testis and ovary. Gene 294 : 45-53.Supplementary Table.