Fish has been recently recognized as a suitable vertebrate model and repre-sents a promising alternative to mammals for studying mechanisms of tis-sue mineralization and unravelling specific questions related to vertebrate bone formation. The recently developedSparus aurata(gilthead seabream) osteoblast-like cell line VSa16 was used to construct a cDNA subtractive library aimed at the identification of genes associated with fish tissue min-eralization.