 Now, you wouldn't think that humans had much in common with zebrafish, but we share more than you might guess. In fact, zebrafish could hold the key to understanding our mental health. Fran is going fishing to find out more. I certainly am a Roma and I am somewhat transfixed by these little fellas right here. These are zebrafish, but I wonder what they've got to do with studying mental health. Well, someone here to help me is Jen Wong. So, Jen, what have these got to do with mental health? How are they helping us with zebrafish? We study zebrafish, especially the genes and psychiatric diseases. Did you know 70% of our genes we share with these? Yes, and about 80% of proteins that are associated with human diseases have zebrafish counterparts. Gosh, that makes them such a good model for studying ourselves. Yes, we do gene editing using CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing system to knock out the specific genes that we're interested in and to explore the association between genes and behaviors. Understood, so you knock out certain genes, get rid of them, stop them from working and then you look at what happens to the fish behavior. Exactly. The best part is we have very similar structure of brains between zebrafish and human. If you go there with Giovanni, he will show you the structure of the brain. Oh, thank you. Hi, Giovanni. Oh, gosh. So, wow, this looks impressive. What have we got here? A lot of light. Definitely a lot of lights. What are those lights? So, here we have the section of the front part of the zebrafish brain. Right. On this other side, we have the same front part, the same section for the mammal brain. Okay, and we're mammals, obviously. We're mammals as well. And as we can see, the same colored region, the same lighted region, are the same brain region that we share with the zebrafish, with the little fella there. For example, we have the isochortex ears, the blue part, lighted in blue. And they spit here. Absolutely. And as you can see, we have the same light also for the learning, for our emotion, for our voluntary movements. And the same goes for the other part of the brain. For example, the amygdala there, the yellow bits, or for the pallidum part, the green lights. And so, the lights that come on, not only do they show us where the regions are that we have in common, but also what they sort of influence in our behavior. Absolutely. That's the amazing thing about zebrafish, because since we share the same brain region since we share the same DNA basically, we really can use zebrafish as a great model organism. It can tell us so much about what we're meant to have. And so, yeah, by using the zebrafish as a model, you can knock out certain genes, see what the result is. And then I suppose from that, not only can you see a change potentially in behavior, but then also look at where drugs might be good to be used and what effects they might have. Absolutely. That is actually one of the final goals, because we share 84 percent of the proteins involved in human diseases with the zebrafish. So, if you're able to target this protein, we can absolutely improve the human health in general, on top of the mental health. So, combining all of these, you can see why actually it's a genius fish. Gosh, who would have known that those little beasts right there share so much in common with us and can actually help our well-being. Gosh, I'm learning so much. It's fantastic. Back to you, Roma. Thanks, Fran. I'm here with Adele Legieri from Queen Mary University. Welcome, Adele. It's great to have you here. Thank you. It's a great pleasure to be here with you today. And tell me a little bit about your area of research. So, we use zebrafish, which is a small freshwater fish, to study genetic variants associated with human psychiatric disease. So, what we do is genetically modify the DNA of these little fish. We turn off specific genes using the CRISPR-Cas9 technique, and then we see what happens in terms of behavioral and molecular effects. So, I mean, it seems quite counterintuitive that zebrafish and humans might have much in common. So, could you explain a little bit about that? So, we share 70 percent of our genes with zebrafish. And 84 percent of the genes, which in human are associated with psychiatric diseases, have a zebrafish counterpart, which makes it a really good translational model for human studies. So, does that mean, I guess, if there's so much commonality between humans and zebrafish, particularly in the terms of mental health, does that mean the zebrafish have some kind of mental health? So, zebrafish have traits that characterize human psychiatric diseases. So, if we can measure anxiety, we can measure their aggressive behavior, impulsivity, they can get addicted to drugs. So, we can actually also study addiction diseases in zebrafish. So, what are you trying to gain from your research overall? What is the kind of the goal by using zebrafish? So, we aim to find, to identify as much genes as possible, because when it comes to psychiatric diseases, it's not just one gene, it's more than one gene together that causes these diseases. So, we aim to identify more genes, of course, and possibly find therapeutic targets to treat human. So, what we're saying is that if a human has some kind of mental health issue, it's quite complex to isolate just one or two or maybe, you know, this number of genes to then, I guess, so, are you trying to predict perhaps which kind of people might be more susceptible to, yeah, and then, like, are there interventions or anything like that? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Especially because we have to bear in mind that it's not just the genes, it's like a strict gene environment interaction. So, it's like 50% of the genes and 50% of the environment. So, I'm sure you read about studies in twins. So, same DNA, same genetics, but one was living in one side of the world and the other one in the other side of the world. And despite the same DNA, so the same genetics, someone was showing signs of anxiety, for example, or ADHD, autism, and the other one was not, because it's not just a gene, it's more than one gene, and together with a lot of genes, it's the environment as well. I mean, it sounds so fascinating and honestly, I don't think I would have ever made a link between zebrafish and the human mental health. So, it's been really interesting to hear about your research. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me here today.