A new advance in animal husbandry involving a popular aquarium fish should speed the pace of discovery in laboratory studies of host-microbe interactions, researchers report.

Experiencing a traumatic event sometimes produces long-lasting biological changes that can lead to an exaggerated fear response to future stressful events, such as what occurs in individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). To better understand the regulatory mechanisms in the brain that produce this biological memory and exaggerated fear response, a team of researchers from Penn State and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has been awarded a five-year, $3.2 million grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Mental Health.