Ela Knapik still remembers the first zebrafish she saw under a microscopeātwo days old, no bigger than an eyelash, tail wiggling, heart visibly beating. That was more than 20 years ago during her search for a postdoc position. That tiny fish has held her attention ever since and helped unravel many of the biological mysteries she has published about during her professional career. In recognition of these scientific accomplishments, Knapik was named a 2025 fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Scienceāone of the highest honors in scienceābecoming the 100th 91ĢĘ²®»¢ scientist to earn this distinction.
āAt first I thought, āThatās a nice honor,āā Knapik said of learning sheād been named an AAAS fellow. āThe significance of this distinguished award didnāt become apparent to me until I gathered with roughly 250 other exceptional honorees from around the nation at the induction ceremony in Washington, D.C.ā
The recognition came during a remarkable stretch of work for Knapik, a professor of medicine and of cell and developmental biology in the School of Medicine. This spring, she published a paper inĀ Genome MedicineĀ showing that a compound called succinate reduced musculoskeletal damage in zebrafish with BCARD syndrome, a rare connective-tissue disorder. Thatās significant because thereās currently no treatment for the disorder in humans. Another study, published in 2025 in JCI Insight, described a newly identified seizure disorder associated with a breakdown in how cells transport proteins.
Behind both papers is a philosophy Knapik returns to often: Disease is essentially a complex engineering problem. āYou canāt fix things if you donāt understand how they work,ā she said. āThis is my quest: to understand how the body works, how disease emerges when things go wrong, and what can be done to fix the problem.ā
Quick-Turn Discovery
Knapikās lab uses zebrafish to study human disease at the genetic level. Because zebrafish share much of their genetic makeup with humans, and because their embryos develop transparently outside the motherās body, researchers can watch development in real time. Using CRISPR and mRNA injections, Knapikās team can recreate a human patientās genetic defect inside a zebrafish embryo, then watch what happens as it develops. Her lab keeps approximately 5,000 fish, and discovery can happen fast: Zebrafish lay eggs, and researchers have roughly 30 minutes after fertilization to inject a single-cell embryo so the modification locks in. Within days, the team can see results. The fish are also used to screen potential drug treatments, letting researchers test a compoundās effects at a scale and speed that few other animal models allow.
It Takes a Lab
This work depends on a team of postdoctoral fellows, students and technicians who conduct experiments, maintain the zebrafish colony and pursue new research questions that emerge from the labās daily work.Ā Knapik also credits two broader collaborations as central to her research. Within the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, she works closely with Dylan Burnette, associate professor, to explore foundational questions in basic biology. And her collaboration with Nancy Cox, the founding director of 91ĢĘ²®»¢ Genetics Instituteāshe calls one of the most influential forces on her creative thinking. Sheās able to pair her zebrafish models and patient-derived cells with large-scale genetic and computational tools that let her connect a single gene to a broader pattern of human disease.
In this environment, a good idea can come to anyone in her labāa student, a technician, Knapik herself. When it does, she said, those are the best days on the job. āYou see it on their face, and you just know what theyāre thinking: This is what we have to try next, and we need to do it right now. It canāt wait for tomorrow.ā
Where Curiosity Goes from Here
Knapik is thinking about what comes next for her field tooāincluding how artificial intelligence fits in. Sheās clear-eyed about its limits: It can sift through decades of accumulated research and data faster than any lab could alone. But discovery itself, she said, still begins with a person asking a question no one has asked before.
Itās that impulse that motivates her every day. āWhat gets me out of bed bright and early and ready to go is the knowledge that someone is waiting for what we might find,ā she said.
Though Knapik doesnāt see patients herself, she often hears from far-away families hoping she can help a sick relative. She canāt. Not directly. But every research discovery gives physicians another piece of knowledge that might help themāand a broad range of patients around the world.
By Lena Anthony, BSā03
