The study of psychiatric disease genes and drugs in zebrafish

• Zebrafish can be used to identify cellular and molecular roles of genes associated with psychiatric diseases.
• Zebrafish behavioral assays that are related to aspects of psychiatric disorders have been developed.
• These behavioral assays can provide valuable tools to screen for new mutations that give rise to disease related phenotypes.
• High-throughput drug screens together with behavioral phenotyping discovered novel compounds with similar effects as validated psychoactive drugs.

Mutations associated with psychiatric disease are being identified, but it remains unclear how the affected genes contribute to disease. Zebrafish is an emerging model to study psychiatric disease genes with a rich repertoire of phenotyping tools. Recent zebrafish research has uncovered potential developmental phenotypes for genes associated with psychiatric disorders, while drug screens have behaviorally characterized small molecules and identified new classes of drugs. Behavioral studies have led to promising models for endophenotypes of psychiatric diseases. While further research is needed to firmly link these models to psychiatric disorders, they are valuable tools for phenotyping genetic mutations and drugs. Recently developed tools in genome editing and in vivo imaging promise additional insights into the processes disrupted by mutations in psychiatric disease genes.