ABSTRACT
Fish are not only inherently interesting; they are also an excellent model with which to address molecular developmental questions in vertebrates. The development of the zebrafish is highly representative of vertebrates and therefore the zebrafish is an ideal model organism for the study of mechanisms of vertebrate molecular development. A great deal of molecular evidence surrounds the nature, generation and maintenance of the somitogenesis clock. Elucidation of the molecular determinants of neural crest specification, migration and differentiation may well have important implications for human genetic disease treatment. The increasing number of tools available for use in experimental zebrafish molecular biology is rapidly approaching those available to study the fruit fly and mouse. The molecular development of the zebrafish represents an ideal model with which to generate a detailed picture of vertebrate molecular development. The prevailing hypothesis of somitogenesis suggests that a genetic oscillator, known as a segmentation clock, operates in the pre-somitic mesoderm.
