研究期間:10301~10312;Assessment of endocrine disruption currently relies on testing strategies involving adult vertebrates. In order to minimize the use of animal tests according to the 3Rs principle of replacement, reduction and refinement, we propose a transcriptomics and fish embryo based approach as an alternative to identify and analyze an estrogenic activity of environmental chemicals. For this purpose, the suitability of different time postfertilization zebrafish embryos to test for estrogenic disruption was evaluated. The embryos were exposed to the pesticide and subsequently analyzed by quantitative real-time PCR. Overall, the study demonstrated that combining fish embryo testing with qRT-PCR can deliver abundant information about the mechanistic effects of endocrine disrupting chemicals, rendering this strategy a promising alternative approach to test for endocrine disruption in a whole organism in-vitro scale system