NewsSplash Issue 22 Summer 2026

Letter from the President

Dear IZFS members: 

Welcome to the summer 2026 edition of the News Splash! Read on for Member News, Science Spotlight articles on new advances in Base Editing and new discoveries about conserved features of regeneration. In Alternative to Academia we profile Ana Beiringer, a former zebrafish researcher who has forged a career in scientific illustration. Also, for U.S. zebrafish researchers, read about the proposed new rules from the Trump administration governing federal grants. As always, many thanks to our volunteer writers and editors for their contributions to the News Splash!  

This issue of the News Splash also highlights the results of the recent IZFS Board Election. Filippo Del Bene has been elected President-elect and will take over as President in 2027 after Karuna Sampath has completed her term. Wiebke Herzog will serve as Treasurer, and Fumi Kubo, Nicholas Foulkes, Zhaoxia Sun and Rubén Marín Juez will all serve as Regional Representatives for the next three years. You can read more about each of them below. Thanks to all the members who stood for election, and congratulations to the winners. Your service to the international zebrafish community is much appreciated. 

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Congratulations to the Incoming Board Members!

Congratulations to the newly elected leaders of the International Zebrafish Society! As a result of the 2026 IZFS Board of Directors election, these new Board members will begin their term after the Board of Directors meeting in the summer of 2026. Dr. Del Bene will serve as President-Elect for one year before ascending the President for one year, then Immediate Past President for one year. Drs. Herzog, Kubo, Foulkes, Marín Juez, and Sun will serve three-year terms in their respective roles.

IZFS Officers

President-Elect: Filippo Del Bene, PhD Paris, France	Treasurer: Wiebke Herzog, PhD Erlangen, Germany

IZFS Regional Representatives

East Asia Regional Representative Fumi Kubo, PhD Wako, Japan	Europe & West Asia Regional Representative Nicholas S. Foulkes, PhD Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen & Heidelberg, Germany
US & Canada Regional Representative Rubén Marín Juez, PhD Montreal, Canada	US & Canada Regional Representative Zhaoxia Sun, PhD New Haven, United States

For the current IZFS Board of Directors, click here.

Thank You to Outgoing Board Members! 

Thank you to the following IZFS Board of Directors members for their efforts and the success they have brought to the zebrafish community. These members will be rotating off this summer.

• Feng Liu, PhD
  IZFS Past President (2026 - 2027)
• Han Wang, PhD 
  IZFS Treasurer (2023 - 2026)
• Filippo Del Bene, PhD
  IZFS Europe & West Asia Representative (2023 - 2026)
  Now President-Elect (2026 - 2027)
• Florence Marlow, PhD
  IZFS US & Canada Representative (2023 - 2026)
• Kelly Monk, PhD
  IZFS US & Canada Representative (2023 - 2026)
• Chengtian Zhao, PhD
  IZFS East Asia Representative (2023 - 2026)

Trump Administration Proposes New Rules for Federal Grants

U.S. zebrafish researchers should be aware of planned rule changes for how federal grants are to be administered, that will take effect this year. On May 29th, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) submitted a detailed plan for the future of grants administration in this country.

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Career Corner: Alternatives to Academia

In this issue of “Career Corner: Alternatives to Academia”, we spoke with Dr. Ana Beiriger, a former zebrafish researcher who has built a career in the field of scientific illustration.

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Science Spotlight

In each issue of the News Splash we invite two early-career members of the zebrafish community to write an article in the newsletter covering recent high-impact zebrafish publications of their choice. If you are interested in participating in this mentored science writing opportunity by writing an article for a future issue, contact Science Spotlight editors Cecilia Moens (cmoens@fredhutch.org) and/or Karuna Sampath (K.Sampath@warwick.ac.uk).

C-ing clearly: high-efficiency cytosine editors redefine disease-variant modelling
By Samhita Krothapalli

Often, a patient leaves a genetics clinic with a question instead of a diagnosis: their genome sequence has a mutation in a disease gene, but whether it is pathogenic or benign is unknown. ​​​When no clinician, database, or published literature can classify a variant in a disease-relevant gene, it earns an ​uncomfortable designation: “variant of uncertain significance”, or VUS. Now, Qin and colleagues in the Varshney lab at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation have engineered TadA, an adenine deaminase to recreate human disease variants in zebrafish and turn previously unresolved VUS into functional verdicts (Qin et al., 2026). 

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What Doesn't Kill These Fish Makes Them Whole Again 
By Akshaya Ramanujam 

Some animals never got the memo that regeneration is supposed to be hard. The axolotl regrows an entire limbas though replacing a leg is a minor inconvenience. The zebrafish rebuilds its fins efficiently, and the Polypterus senegalus – an armored, lung-breathing relic of a fish whose body plan is virtually unchanged since the Devonian period 400 million years ago – can rebuild lost anatomy with the same unhurried competence. For decades, evolutionary biologists have wondered whether the ability to regenerate a complex appendage is something each lineage invented independently, or whether it is written into a much older, deeper genetic inheritance (Goss, 1969; Tanaka, 2016). A new study from the Schneider laboratory at Louisiana State University reveals that appendage regeneration in axolotls, zebrafish, and Polypterus is built on a shared, core genetic architecture inherited from a common vertebrate ancestor (Sousa et al., 2026). 

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Photo Highlight: Focus on Hybridization Chain Reaction

In the past few years, new Hybridization Chain Reaction (HCR) probe technology in zebrafish has opened the door to high sensitivity fluorescent probes: up to 200-fold signal increase compared to direct-labeled probes, that also allow multiplexing of RNA and/or protein targets.

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These three HCR images were chosen for the IZFS website banner.
Read about them here.

Submit Your Zebrafish Photos to be Featured on the IZFS Website

We will be highlighting images, both photographs and line illustrations, from members' labs annually. You can submit your fantastic images to be featured on the IZFS website below! We look forward to promoting the beautiful science done by members of the IZFS. 

SUBMIT

Meet the PI

Featuring: Yiyue Zhang, PhD

Each issue of the News Splash highlights the research and careers of PIs who are members of the IZFS. We ask them to answer questions that were developed with input from graduate students and postdocs, reflecting their curiosity about the issues and challenges faced by zebrafish PIs from around the world. 

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Meet the Researchers

Featuring: Stephen Carter & Shiho Suzuki

This section features a questionnaire for two student researchers. It aims to recognize these IZFS members and the obstacles they face as encouragement for new students. We ask them to answer questions about their areas of research, career paths, personal aspects, and advice on challenges that incoming researchers might face.

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Zebrafish Community News

Many members of the zebrafish community have been recognized for their scientific and mentoring contributions in recent months. This list of awardees was selected from a curated list maintained by Zebrafish Rock! and can be found, along with many other causes for celebration, in the Zebrafish Rock! Slack channel.

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IZFS 2026 Awardees

Congratulations to the winners of the Chi-Bin Chien and George Streisinger Awards!
Read more about the Awardees here.

Chi-Bin Chien Award	George Streisinger Award
Yinan Wan, PhD University of Basel Basel, Switzerland	David Jonah Grunwald, PhD University of Utah Salt Lake City, United States

Upcoming Events

See more about our Community Events on our Community Calendar!

EMBO Practical Course: Computational and Experimental Microbiomics
July 6-18, 2026
Bath, United Kingdom

13th European Zebrafish Meeting
July 7-11, 2026
Vienna, Austria

MBL Zebrafish Course
July 23 - August 6, 2026
Woods Hole, Massachusetts, USA

3rd European Zebrafish Husbandry Association Meeting
October 1-3, 2026
Naples, Italy

Neural Circuits & Behavior Conference
December 9-12, 2026
Munich, Germany

12th Strategic Conference of Zebrafish Investigators
January 10-13, 2027
Merida, Mexico

23rd Australian and New Zealand Zebrafish Meeting
July 31 - February 3, 2027
University of Western Australia

20th International Zebrafish Conference
Summer 2027
Daejeon, Korea

Job Postings

To post to the IZFS Job Board you must be a member. Click here to join. If you have a job to post, please send an e-mail to info@izfs.org

Have an idea for the newsletter or would like to contribute? Contact us at info@izfs.org! We'd love to hear from you!