Comment by t-b on 29/08/2021 at 08:58 UTC*

25 upvotes, 2 direct replies (showing 2)

View submission: Why can’t fish get rabies?

Ha! I’m weirdly qualified to answer this as I have given zebrafish a virus from the same family as Rabies: VSV. We use a specially engineered version of the virus that is “G protein deleted.” The G protein is necessary for retrograde transmission of the virus. By expressing the glycoprotein (G) in a subpopulation of cells that we are interested in, we can trace the receptive field of a neuron, making the upstream neurons that talk to our cell of interest glow green. Or express whatever other genetic payload that is of interest.

Other groups use rabies in zebrafish for the same purpose, which shares the same G protein that is necessary for retrograde transmission.

So YES fish can contract rabies.

Edit: since I'm contradicting the top-voted answer, here's a paper that infects zebrafish with rabies: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31068795/

Replies

Comment by [deleted] at 29/08/2021 at 15:46 UTC*

13 upvotes, 0 direct replies

[removed]

Comment by brucebrowde at 29/08/2021 at 22:37 UTC

1 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Do fish infected with rabies face the same "certain death" scenario or are their symptoms different?