Glowing Fish are First Genetically Engineered Pets 361
securitas writes "It was bound to happen. Texas-based biotechnology company Yorktown Technologies will start selling a 'genetically engineered aquarium fish that glows in the dark.' The trademarked GloFish -- 'a tropical zebra fish infused with the gene of a sea anemone that makes it glow fluorescent red' -- is first genetically engineered pet. The possible consequences of introducing a new trangenic species into the environment has touched off a debate that has critics such as the National Academies of Science and the Center for Food Safety calling for a ban on the sale of the fish unless the FDA regulates and approves it. The fish go on sale in January 2004. You can see photos of the GloFish here. Cool, but it's no Blinky." M : I think these guys are marketing the fish for a Taiwanese company.
I saw this the other day (Score:1, Informative)
Old news (Score:5, Informative)
Here [enn.com] or here [mongabay.com]
Re:Novelty Item (Score:1, Informative)
On the other hand, they look pretty cool. More photos here [segrestfarms.com].
I think I'll add them to my Christmas wish list. :-)
And to go with these red-glowing GloFish, maybe I'll add some of these green-glowing Night Perls from Taiwan:
news story [guardian.co.uk] picture [mongabay.com].
Why we make glowing animals (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wrong. (Score:3, Informative)
Did you mean Gregor Mendel [accessexcellence.org] (1822-1884)?
Furthermore, Mendel worked primarily with traits of pea plants, which clearly could intermingle in nature. The same is true with dogs - I think if you look around you will find they are not terribly particular about who, when, or where they, ur, cross-breed with.
I think that the questions most people have about altering DNA stem (pun intended) from the fact that humans are creating results that could never occur in nature.
Re:Wrong. (Score:5, Informative)
From m-w.com:
transgenic - Having chromosomes into which one or more heterologous genes have been incorporated either artificially or naturally
heterologous - derived from a different species
The article says: "a tropical zebra fish infused with the gene of a sea anemone that makes it glow fluorescent red." Im no fish expert but i dont think you can breed fish with sea anemones.
For your analogy to work, you would have to say something like english bulldogs received genes from a silk spider and now has silky smooth dog turds and can walk up walls.
Re:Novelty Item (Score:5, Informative)
Genetic engineering is hard work. Just as mechanical engineers build prototypes to test their ideas before going into full-scale production, so do genetic engineers (and, actually, every other type of engineer I can think of.) As I mentioned in another post, we breed glowing mice at my work; it took about five years of basic research and another three years of trial and error to get a strain of true-breeding* GFP** mice.
Are these mice useful for anything in themselves? Well, actually, they are; it turns out the GFP gene is a useful marker for other genes that don't express quite so dramatically. But that really wasn't the point. The point was to learn how to implant certain genes -- say, genes that are a risk factor for certain kinds of cancer, or genes for resistance to AIDS, or genes to produce useful drugs -- in a true-breeding strain of mice. Now that technology is understood, and it can usefully be applied to all the examples I gave and many more.
No one gets upset when Ford builds a concept car, for God's sake.
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* True-breeding means that the children of parents with these characteristics will reliably have the characteristics themselves.
** Green Fluorescent Protein. IIRC, originally found in jellyfish.
These DO NOT glow in the dark (Score:5, Informative)
These "GloFish" DO NOT glow in the dark. They fluoresce red under a black light (UV radiation, for those of us who care). But from everything I've read, they don't emit any light at all in the absence of external UV. None. So, that pretty much makes them "Glow-in-the-LIGHT fish."
Now, I'm not entirely suprised that the NYTimes doesn't understand that difference, but slashdotters should be able to.
Re:Voodoo Antiscience (Score:2, Informative)
The antis are worried about what might happen when these fish are released into the wild, as inevitably happens to a fair proportion of any pet species. You may not be going to eat the things, but predators are. And you might end up eating one of the predators. Hence the FDA connection.
It's paranoia, perhaps, but it's a question that's worth asking nonetheless. If the sellers can convince the authorities that the fish are safe, then the paranoid are left without a leg to stand on. Why don't you want this to happen? I don't for a moment believe that you're secretly worried that they'll turn out not to be safe, so what is your reason for not wanting anyone to certify that they are?
These fish are sterlized... (Score:2, Informative)
It sure beats the old method (Score:3, Informative)
Much better for the individual fish.
Re:Novelty Item (Score:5, Informative)
Where do fluorescent zebra fish come from?
Fluorescent zebra fish were specially bred to help detect environmental pollutants. By adding a natural fluorescence gene to the fish, scientists are able to quickly and easily determine when our waterways are contaminated. The first step in developing these pollution detecting fish was to create fish that would be fluorescent all the time. It was only recently that scientists realized the public's interest in sharing the benefits of this research. We call this the GloFish (TM) fluorescent fish.
Re:A Real Challenge (Score:3, Informative)
I have 3 zebra danios, and considering how little I actually clean my aquarium, they are extremely resilient little fish. I'm talking on-par with goldfish as far as hardiness. There is also a long-fin variety of danios that are quite pretty, I'd like to see some glow in the dark long finned ones.
Anyway, my point is, any idiot that can keep half-way decent water in a tank, should be able to keep these little guys happy
Klowner
Hold the presses! 5 month old news! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Novelty Item (Score:3, Informative)
Here in SW Florida, we have a big problem with Australian Paper trees. They look like a Birch sorta with this peeling thin paper like bark. While they are a hayfever hazard, the worse is what they do the environment. They suck all the water out of the water tables.
Even worse, when you chop dow n the trees, they release thier seeds. So you need to poison the trees first, then wait a week to chop them down.
There is a big tree problem in SWF, and it is a slow expensive process to get rid of them. You see, noone realized the problem untill after it was well established.
Re:Mod parent up (Score:3, Informative)