Screening in zebrafish provides many advantages over other established in vivo models by allowing large numbers of compounds to be rapidly profiled using small amounts of compound.

 Some of the key attributes of zebrafish are listed below:

• Significant genetic similarities with humans; genes and pathways are well conserved
• Physiology, development and metabolism closely parallels mammalian systems
• Exposure to compounds predominantly causes similar effects to those seen in human
• They have the potential to reduce the number of higher animals used in testing

In addition zebrafish are particularly well suited to high throughput screening:

• They can be screened multi-well plates due to their small size
• They require very small quantities of compound for testing (typically single milligrams)
• Their rapid reproductive and development cycles allows fast turnaround times
• Each breeding pair of zebrafish can produce several hundred embryos in a single mating
• They are DMSO tolerant (up to 1.5%)