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Background: Large-scale genome-wide association studies have begun to uncover numerous candidate genes linked to schizophrenia. Yet it remains unclear how these genes function and how they contribute to the underlying molecular, cellular, developmental and behavioral processes disrupted in the disorder.

Methods: Recent technological breakthroughs in zebrafish—targeted genome editing with CRISPR/Cas9, whole-brain activity imaging, brain atlas registration, behavioral profiling—combined with the ease of studying large numbers of animals make it an ideal system for analyzing psychiatric disease genes. Combining these technologies, I have generated zebrafish mutants for over 100 schizophrenia-associated genes and am analyzing them for differences in neurological activity and morphology, as well as altered behavior. To assay these mutants for functionally altered brains, I …