Liver regeneration biology: Implications for liver tumour therapies

Table 3 Advantages and disadvantages of zebrafish as a model for human liver pathophysiology

Advantages	Disadvantages
Vertebrate body plan	Partial genome duplication in teleosts
Ease of husbandry	Differences in microanatomy and liver architecture
Inexpensive to maintain	Less conserved physiology than mammalian models
Large numbers of embryos produced rapidly	Less conserved morphogenesis than mammals
External development	Less developed cell culture technology
Optical clarity during development	Poorly developed embryonic stem cell technology
Zebrafish liver not required for foetal haematopoiesis
Amenable to forward and reverse genetics
Molecular conservation of development
Amenable to high-throughput screening: (1) Phenotype assessment; and (2) Drug/chemical screening