I have noticed that the interest of drug companies in invertebrate models has shifted from Drosophila to the zebrafish. Is there any evidence that fish is a better model for drug discovery than fruit flies?

Yes, there have been a lot of genetic studies on zebra fish that have shown analogous results to human trials (e.g. melanoma studies), suggesting a vertebrate model for these studies....plus zebra fish are almost as easy to maintain as Drosophila.

There are all sorts of advantages to zebrafish as well - easier to handle (i.e don't escape!), see through embryos - meaning it is easy to view any developmental abnormalities etc.

I ended up buying a venus fly trap for a lab I was in once because the flies kept escaping from next door!

Imagine, months of work flying away down the corridor!

I can relate. I used to work in a fly lab. It's a helpless feeling having about 50 flies begin to wake up and start crawling around because the gas is getting low.

I found this article that might be of interest

New ways to admire zebrafish: progress in functional genomics research methodology
Cathleen Teh, Serguei Parinov, and Vladimir Korzh

http://www.biotechniques.com/default.asp?page=current&subsection=article_display&display=full&id=61200517&prevpage=current

Very Good article Labrat. I liked the website they listed in their article:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/guide/zebrafish/index.html

...on the zebrafish genome

As an entomologist, I appreciate the opening of this topic!

Although I generally know medical importance of insects, I would like to open a discussion on detailed studies from scientists who has knowledge on "medicinal insects".

For those interested in this topic, there's a very interesting article in the current issue of biotechniques.

Making waves in cancer research: new models in the zebrafish

http://www.biotechniques.com/default.asp?page=aop&subsection=article_display&display=full&id=7120052