The Zebrafish Information Network (
ZFIN) is an online
biological database of information about the
zebrafish (Danio rerio). The zebrafish is a widely used
model organism for
genetic,
genomic, and
developmental studies, and ZFIN provides an integrated interface for querying and displaying the large volume of data generated by this research.[2] To facilitate use of the zebrafish as a model of
human biology, ZFIN links these data to corresponding information about other model organisms (e.g.,
mouse) and to human disease databases.[3] Abundant links to external
sequence databases (e.g.,
GenBank) and to genome browsers are included. Gene product, gene expression, and phenotype data are annotated with terms from biomedical
ontologies. ZFIN is based at the
University of Oregon in the United States, with funding provided by the
National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Contents
ZFIN consists of two principal parts:
a website of community news and announcements, as well as biological resources such as laboratory protocols, a
gene nomenclature guide, and anatomy information
a
relational database containing biological data that are
curated from the scientific literature and that are directly submitted by zebrafish research laboratories (e.g., Thisse high-throughput gene expression analysis[4]).
Information in ZFIN is tightly linked to the web resources of the Zebrafish International Resource Center (
ZIRC), the
China Zebrafish Resource Center (
CZRC), and so on, which maintain and provide zebrafish-related research resources, materials and services.
ZFIN's relational database interface provides query forms and display pages for the following biological data types: