Establishing Zebrafish as a Novel Exercise Model: Swimming Economy, Swimming-Enhanced Growth and Muscle Growth Marker Gene Expression

Zebrafish has been largely accepted as a vertebrate multidisciplinary model but its usefulness as a model for exercise physiology has been hampered by the scarce knowledge on its swimming economy, optimal swimming speeds and cost of transport. Therefore, we have performed individual and group-wise swimming experiments to quantify swimming economy and to demonstrate the exercise effects on growth in adult zebrafish.).From the results of our study we can conclude that zebrafish can be used as an exercise model for enhanced growth, with implications in basic, biomedical and applied sciences, such as aquaculture