As an experimental model for behavioral, genetic, and toxicological studies, zebrafish is playing an increasing role in the fields of human health, medicine, and environmental protection. Zebrafish have high genetic, anatomical and physiological homology with humans, with up to 87% of their genes identified, which means that the results of experiments conducted on zebrafish can be analogous to humans in most cases. Therefore, a large number of embryology, genetics, toxicology studies, as well as experiments related to a variety of human diseases, have selected zebrafish as a model organism. Based on its biological characteristics, zebrafish models are widely used in the safety and efficacy evaluation of cosmetics.
In terms of oil control efficacy, the zebrafish model can be used to observe the effect of cosmetics on sebum secretion. The secretion of sebum is mainly regulated by male hormones, the most important of which is testosterone, which can be converted into dihydrotestosterone under the catalysis of 5-reductase, which then binds to the receptor protein in the nucleus of sebaceous cells to produce a large amount of sebum. Therefore, the detection of the changes in the expression of 5-reductase gene in zebrafish by fluorescence real-time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) can evaluate the oil control effect of cosmetics.
Specifically, cosmetics can be applied to zebrafish**, and then fluorescence real-time quantitative PCR technology can be used to detect the expression level of the 5-reductase gene. If a cosmetic product has an oil-controlling effect, then it should be able to inhibit the expression of the 5-reductase gene, thereby reducing sebum production.