11th SCZI Meeting Report
Written by Kelly Smith
The 11th Strategic Conference of Zebrafish Investigators (SCZI) took place from the 14-17th January 2026 at the National University of Singapore (NUS). This was the first SCZI meeting to take place outside of Asilomar (USA) and attendees were spoilt by the wonders of the tropical and cosmopolitan City-State of Singapore. In the spirit of Asilomar meetings, participants enjoyed reconnecting, meeting anew, sharing, learning and discussing all things zebrafish (and more!). This was greatly assisted by an engaging social program, in addition to the scientific program, and included a welcome reception, transport to Gardens by the Bay, where attendees could explore and wander at their leisure, and was capped off by the conference banquet at Penguin Cove Restaurant, followed by a night safari with evening bird show. All of this was made possible by the generous support of IZFS, NUS and many fabulous sponsors. The conference ran smoothly thanks to the efforts of the local organising committee, especially Ajay Mathuru, Sudipto Roy and Caroline Wee. On behalf of all participants, thanks to all involved for bringing about such a successful meeting.
The meeting included two keynote addresses, both by prominent non-zebrafish researchers at the National University of Singapore. Antonia Monteiro opened the meeting by presenting her work on gene regulatory networks (GRN) in the wing patterns of butterflies. She discussed these as examples of modular GRNs and described how these can be co-opted in various developmental contexts to efficiently redeploy or, sometimes, establish a completely new developmental process. Rong Li closed the meeting with a presentation of her lab’s bench-to-bedside approach to disorders of aging, from declining fertility to neurodegenerative disease. She showed that transplants of aged oocytes into young follicles could rejuvenate many of the declining features of aging oocytes, suggesting extrinsic factors may be harnessed to improve egg quality and assist reproductive technologies. She then showed evidence that a mechanism called “MAGIC” (mitochondria as guardian in cytosol) that her lab described in yeast could suppress behavioural defects in a mouse model of Parkinson’s disease simply by viral delivery of mitochondrial proteases to the adult brain.
In addition to these presentations, the meeting consisted of 27 plenary talks, 45 concurrent talks, and 26 poster presentations. There were also five workshops covering the various themes of: Microscopy & imaging for all; Zebrafish as a Discovery Platform for Evo-Devo; Sustainability in zebrafish research; Zebrafish behavioural assays and their applications; and a Community-driven Resources, Tools and Services session. There were two different Community meeting sessions: One for each of the three major regions (Asia Pacific, Europe, and the Americas) where local issues could be discussed, and one broader community session where issues and events common to all could be discussed. Noteworthy discussion items from these workshops and sessions included the exciting array of future meetings in the calendar, and highly informative and productive discussion on cryopreservation. The many advantages of this practice were expounded by Zoltan Varga (ZIRC), and include:
- Space saving
- Researcher time and money savings
- Minimising or preventing disease spread (if they’re not swimming, they can’t catch it)
- Faster reinitiation of lines, should disaster strike
- Water and energy consumption savings
- Plastic use reduction
- Animal welfare and health monitoring/screening channelled to active colonies.
With these many advantages, the question was asked: Why aren’t more researchers adopting the practice? It was concluded that concerns exist around the success rates of the practice. However, cryopreservation (and recovery) has come a long way, so maybe it’s worth dipping your toe back in. Moving forward, ZIRC is working on kits that are simple and effective for this practice, with plans for their distribution. In the meantime, there is a YouTube video of sperm cryopreservation and IVF which can be followed, but users should employ these more recent cryopreservant solutions that give higher fertility upon thawing.
Finally, there was much discussion about the frustration of increasingly strict border controls that are impeding sharing of lines between countries. The early promise that sperm shipment might overcome this impediment has been scuppered in several territories due to regulations around germ plasm (see a recent article in the IZFS News Splash for more on this topic). However, whilst sperm can’t fly through customs as easily as we might have hoped, shipping sperm does offer several advantages, including allowing for longer shipping times and directly crossing to your desired background via in vitro fertilisation. As a final note on these community issues, it was pointed out by our Society President, Cecilia Moens: Our collective frustration around border restrictions that hamper line sharing is a wonderful indication of the goodwill of our community. It highlights our strong desire to help one another and to advance the field forward.
TO THE SCIENCE:
Of course, it wasn’t all workshops and community discussions. The meeting was a smorgasbord of exciting science. Several themes popped up time and time again, including: multiple studies examining the role of Ca2+ in a many cellular processes, from oocyte activation (Tom Carney, NTU, Singapore) to signalling in cilia for left-right patterning (Shiaulou Yuan, Harvard Med, USA). The role of bioelectric signaling in fin regeneration was also explored in two intriguing talks (Christpher Antos, TU Dresden and Chen-Hui Chen, Academia Sinica, Taiwan). There were several talks on aspects of cardiac regeneration, from cardiomyocyte proliferation to macrophage contribution, to the role of the ECM in this process. The role of macrophages in various regeneration contexts was highlighted in several talks: macrophages create a stem cell niche and secrete exosomes to promote muscle regeneration (Pete Currie, Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute), while after cardiac injury, damaged cardiomyocytes activate an autophagy program that recruits macrophages (Arica Beisaw, Heidelberg University), which in turn induce cardiomyocyte dedifferentiation (Shih-Lei (Ben) Lai, Academia Sinica, Taiwan). However, too much inflammation can also be bad for cardiac regeneration (Jiandong Liu, U. North Carolina, USA).
There were also mind-bending Evo-Devo studies demonstrating the conserved nature of enhancer elements, a description of the evolution of paired fins (Tom Carney, NTU, Singapore), and a new example of convergent evolution (Ben Hogan, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Australia). There were also several surprising talks on the miniature (subcellular) world, from migrasomes that are secreted by migrating macrophages (Graham Lieschke, Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute), to biohybrid microbots used to target stem cells to sites of injury (Stephan Neuhauss, U. Zurich, Switzerland). Other unexpected findings included a never-before-seen compound from a screen fungal secretions that puts early zebrafish embryos into suspended animation for up to two days (Jeroen den Hertog, Hubrecht Inst., The Netherlands), a startling ability of zebrafish embryos to survive with high levels of aneuploidy (Sean Burgess, UC Davis, USA), and a mysterious trans-generational effect of inflammation whereby the offspring of fish that experienced cardiac injury themselves have reduced cardiac function (Nadia Mercader, U. Bern, Switzerland).
In addition to these themes, there were sessions on advances in technologies, which are always a treat and widely popular, uniting our community across research domains. Topics in these sessions included pushing the boundaries of spatial transcriptomics (Mirana Ramialison, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Australia), alternative transgenesis approaches that employ hemi-driver systems (such as split Gal4; Jeff Mumm, Johns Hopkins University, USA) or an alternative to Gal4/UAS (the CroF2/OR3 system; Kazuhide Asakawa, Nat’l Inst. Of Genetics, Japan). An exciting talk was presented on chronological lineage tracing (termed “Clok”; Filippo Del Bene, Institut de la Vision, France), a method for isolating and sequencing neurons that respond to visual stimuli(termed “CAMPari-Seq, Fumi Kubo, RIKEN Center for Brain Science, Japan), and advances in base editing approaches (Yanmei Liu, South China Normal Univ., China) were presented.
Some exciting leaps forward were presented for large community resources: Excitingly, significant advancements have been made on the assembly of several genomes: GRCz12tu and GRCz12ab are now patched together, with all scaffolds and random pieces finding their chromosomal homes. Ensembl has completed annotation for both assemblies. The annotation files are available for download now and will be on the Ensembl browser sometime in the summer. Take a look: you might find that elusive gene “without an ortholog” in there. These telomere-to-telomere genomes now available for fish brings zebrafish genomes up to the level of other great species. NCBI will be annotating GRCz12ab and updating GRCz12tu and the updates will be released this summer (for Northern hemisphere folk). There are new coding sequences and introns/exons appearing in there as well (Christian Mosimann presented Shawn Burgess’s slides in his regrettable absence). There was a presentation on ZAPP: A Community-led zebrafish toxicology phenotype atlas. This ambitious effort aims to standardise phenotypes, defining a “defect” from “normal” structure with standardised nomenclature. A call out to the community to assist in this effort was made and, if you think you can contribute, head to Zappfish.org, where they intend to credit contributions (Sabrina Toro, UNC-Chapel Hill, USA). A Zebrafish 3D Microanatomical Atlas was presented that uses microCT imaging to collect spatial imaging data at <1um resolution (Khai Ang, Penn State, USA). Finishing this session was a discussion about Piglet technology that has established lines with safe (transgenesis) landing sites in the genome, and current efforts to create more of these in other chromosomes (Christian Mosimann, CU Anschutz, USA). The challenges of shipping fish were also discussed, and some key strategies were presented with the hope that your next shipment is successful and doesn’t get stuck on the tarmac. There was a lot of collective experience in the room, and it was agreed that communication is key, as is knowledge about the region you are shipping to: each border is different, so ask someone who has recent experience. The staff zirc@zebrafish.org).
As a last comment on the meeting, whilst we naturally indulged in the greatness of the zebrafish model, there was significant representation of other species presented in concert with zebrafish studies. These species included Cavefish, Killifish, Sharks, Yeast, Mouse, Chicken, and a marsupial, the Fat-tailed Dunnart. There was acknowledgement that for its many virtues, zebrafish are weird: some physiological features are unique to it, so take care, and if undertaking evolutionary claims, it’s worth coupling genomic analysis with other species, such as the spotted gar, whose genome serves as a particularly useful evolutionary “bridge”. There was shared and acknowledged frustration at the use of the term “lower vertebrates” for zebrafish. In discussions of the strengths and weaknesses of the model, what is clear is we all have a fervour for fish. Through sharing our common gripes or the hacks that make our research stronger and more efficient, it united us with a strong sense of a thriving community. It’s difficult to leave such a meeting without feeling part of a bigger whole, so a big thank-you to all attendees for contributing to that wonderful vibe.