Aleström Zebrafish Lab - activities beyond the research projects 2007-2011

The major focus of the AZLab services are two-fold: 1) Being a regional center, in an national and international network of transgenic zebrafish laboratories, with capacity to offer access to the zebrafish model for academic and commercial partners. 2) Es tablish a unique training program in zebrafish transgenic technology on a national and international scale. Zebrafish Service Laboratory Function - The AZlab laboratory is a state-of-the-art facility with a holding capacity of 15,000 fish. Currently, it s major focus is towards basic research based activities. More recently the AZlab has successfully expanded its role into a service laboratory offering a range of national services to numerous researchers such as a renting-a-tank scheme, production of emb ryos, egg microinjection for transgenic zebrafish production, and availability of our custom-made zebrafish microarray system. Zebrafish Transgenesis Training Program -The AZlab together with the Norwegain Transgenic Center plan to establish a national training program in zebrafish and mouse transgenic techniques. Funding from this application would support the zebrafish part of the training initiative. The course would run consecutively with the highly successful and internationally attended Norwegian Transgenic Animal Forum (NTAF). The specialized and hands on course would be offered to a limited number of applications (primarily PhD students). Our vision in this project is to expand our service lab resource to offer our current services to new and existing customers. Also a long-term objective is to become a regional zebrafish information resource center and contact point to the scientific community. Funding here will at least enable us to initiate this foresight.