The generation and use of transgenic animals carrying exogenous pieces of DNA stably integrated in their genome is a quite common practice in modern laboratories. Zebrafish have been increasingly used for transgenesis studies mainly due to easy egg accessibility and manipulation together with relatively short generation time. The zebrafish transgenic technology becomes very useful when coupled to continuous in vivo observation of the vertebrate embryonic vasculature. Here we describe the most common technique to generate zebrafish transgenic fish using the Tol2-based methodology and their applications to visualize vascular tissues or endothelial cells in vivo and for functional tumor angiogenesis studies.
Keywords: Gateway cloning system; Tol2 system; Transgenesis; Zebrafish embryos.