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Re: Slightly off topic but important to our hobby
On 14 Jun 2001, at 6:24, Scott wrote:
> The tiny city state pushed new boundaries when the
> National University of Singapore created green and red
> fluorescent versions of the black and white zebra fish
> earlier this year.
>
> The technology, which permanently embeds a green
> fluorescent gene from a jellyfish and the red color
> from a sea anemone into the zebra fish, can be used on
> other species, researchers say.
Cool where can I get some.:-)
Don't panic, the reason why this was done in zebras (a dime a
dozen fish) as opposed to the discus is that we have 10 or 20
years of experiance playing with zebra genetics and have been
cloning them off and on... The method used to do this is very
expensive and doesn't have a great yield.
On fertilization a very fine needle is used to inject themodified DNA
after the original DNA has been removed. Along the way numerous
eggs die. Of the surviving eggs there is no garantee that the added
gene will be expressed...:-(
I'vve toyed with such ideas for a while. At one stage I wanted to
make glowin the dark african violets (very easy!) with the jelly fish
green flourescent protein (GFP). I benched my plans as I was busy
and didn't have time to beat off an Green Pease loons and the like...
The question as to wether this is right is open to debate. My
opinion is as long as it doesn't hurt people or cuase the organims
any discomfort then is okay. In essence nothing has changed
about the fish other than it now expresses a new pigment. It is no
more a jelly fish or anemone than we are now.
I don't see any chance of us seeing glow in the dark killies, discus
etc... for a long time. This technology it just too expensive for most
hatcheries and I doubt the creation of the zebras was spurred on
by financial gain (here is a big ethical problem...) but rather to see
if the proteins would be expressed and how the immune system
would react. Of couse these fish can become big sellers...
Bye
Tyrone Genade
Southern African Killifish Society Coastal & Offshore Coordinator
AKA 08248
tyronegenade at yahoo_com
http://www.geocities.com/tyronegenade
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P450 Lab, Biochemistry Department
University of Stellenbosch, 7602, South Africa
Ph: +27-021-808-5876, fax: +27-021-808-5863
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In God I trust,
but in all others I must have irrefutable proof!
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