Insights and emerging perspectives from the 2025 Medaka PI / ERC IndiGene meeting: Heidelberg July 22–24, 2025

The Japanese medaka, Oryzias latipes, has become an important vertebrate model organism for addressing research questions across a broad range of disciplines, including developmental and evolutionary biology, stem cells, gene-environment interactions, behavioral neuroscience, disease modeling, and drug discovery. The medaka community took advantage of the successful completion of the ERC Synergy Grant project IndiGene to gather once again in the beautiful Heidelberg (July 22-25, 2025). Building on the opportunities created by the IndiGene project, which leverages the medaka inbreed panel Medaka Inbred Kiyosu-Karlsruhe as a unique resource for dissecting complex phenotype-genotype relationships, the meeting offered an outstanding update on emerging concepts, technologies, and community resources. By summarizing the content of each session, this report provides an overview of a vibrant and highly productive event that highlights the continued growth and vitality of medaka research.