Insults equal change

What are six ways to insult a zebrafish? Students from Stratford High School ask Auckland University's Dr Love.

Transcript

Student: You are mentioning the word insult. Can you elaborate on that for me?

Dr Love Auckland University): I’m imposing something on them. And the insult or the impact, or perturbation. I don’t care what you call it, it’s the same thing. I have some control over the environment. And it could be I impose some DNA change – I introduce into the programme a DNA element which affects the programme. I’ve insulted the programme. Not in any personal, “bad news” sort of way, but the outcome. I’ve altered the programme so there has been an impact on it and now I am going to assess the consequences.

That is all we do in modelling. We impose some insult, some impact, on the programme and we assess it. What sort of insults? What impacts? It could be DNA based. It could be RNA based. It could be diet. It could be chemicals. It could be environmental changes, the amount of light in the system, electro-magnetic radiation, you name it.