Objective To explore the role of ripply1 in zebrafish dorsal-ventral development. Methods Using zebrafish whole-mount in situ hybridization to examine the ripply1 expression pattern in early embryo development. To analyse the expression pattern changes of dorsal-ventral marker genes at shield stage and the morphological changes at 24 hpf (hours post-fertilization) after overexpression of ripply1 by injecting synthetic mRNA at 1-cell stage. Using Tol2 transposon technology to obtain a ripply1 promoter driven GFP transgenic fish and to identify promoter region that recapitulates endogenous ripply1 expression pattern. Results The in situ hybridization results revealed that ripply1 specifically expresses in the future dorsal region at shield stage. Overexpression of ripply1 caused an enhanced expression of dorsal marker genes and a reduction of ventral marker genes. Embryos overexpressing ripply1 also showed severely dorsalized phenotype, with enlarged head, reduced ventral yolk extension, and shortened posterior trunk and tail regions, and the formation of a secondary trunk axis. Transgenic fish revealed the maternal expression of ripply1 and suggested that a 1.2 kb promoter-driven GFP is able to recapitulate the endogenous gene expression pattern. Conclusions ripply1 may participate in the early development of dorsal-ventral axis in zebrafish embryo.