Glow Fish

[Mzungu]

Re: Glow Fish

From the glofish website, it's a nice, short FAQ on some of the questions asked here.

http://www.glofish.com/about.asp#science_4

[Mzungu]

Re: Glow Fish

Also, go to the science part of the website:

http://www.glofish.com/science.asp

It has lots of good info from people that actually had part in engineering these fish.

[RussGB]

Re: Glow Fish

From other science papers I have read, no matter how good our skills are, certain animals are way better at detecting this stuff than any reasonably priced test equipment...

The idea (once the switching gene is working) is that you shine a black light on the fish in water and if it is bad the glow and if not they don't. You get a jar of the water to be tested, out of bright light, stick a glofish or two in, hold up a black light and see what happens. Its not to dump them in the water in the wild and see if they glow. But.....the glo gene was easy, and the switch isn't!

[JLawson]

Re: Glow Fish

It's also interesting to note that the zebrafish is being used in MANY other research areas as well.  If you Google "zebrafish human medical" you'll get a list of hits showing the broad range of genetic/medical research made possible by these little guys.  Advances are being made in better understanding birth defects, cancer, cellular degeneration, cellular differentiation in embryo development, muscular dystrophy, and cardiomyopathy to name just a few.  This fishes' abundant availability, ease of care, and prolific breeding ability make it an ideal tool for advanced genetic modeling.

Good as a dither fish, good for cycling a new tank, AND useful for improving the human condition... an amazing little fish!

[guppymax]

Re: Glow Fish

All right! You all have sold me the science part! The releasing it to the public part still sounds pretty lame to me and made me question everything. They should have hired you all to write the article.

max

[Spot86t]

Re: Glow Fish

I've got some of them - I'll admit I picked them because at one point I wanted a black gravel tank, with some fluorescent colored rocks in it and fish that would glow with a blacklight.  I didn't intend to run a blacklight all the time instead of a regular bulb, but I thought that on occasion it would be neat to light it like that every once in a while to 'fishwatch'.  

So I got the glows, black gravel, bright rocks, cavelike things with bright colors on them (for my hiders to shelter in) and tried it out...  They all glowed as intended, but besides just holding the light up a few times then to check things, the blacklight sits in the storage room somewhere.  

Not sure I'll ever set it up like that - seems just as peasurable without the blacklight.  I've found that LED lights also create more of a glow to the fish than standard fluourescent or incandescent bulbs.  For example, the "green" glowfish always look yellow to me, but turn out the lights and look at them with an LED flashlight, and that's when you see the green.

To me, engineered genetics are a different thing than something that's been injected or dyed or tattood (whatever they call it).  They're not 'stressed' or 'hurt' by engineering the way I think they likely are by things done to them after they're born/hatched.  

That's just my $.02

[GatorRock]

Re: Glow Fish

Okay so maybe I can help a little here...  Quick note on my background  I am a PhD student in my last year of my degree in Human Gene Therapy and Molecular Genetics so I can shed some LIGHT of the subject.  

So the orignal concept of these fish are as such- make 'em glow when bad things are found.  How does it work- simple (but of course not simple to do)-

Say you want a fish that will glow when lead is in the water-  you have a few genes in the fish that rely on that chemical to function to end up glowing.  We use this concept a lot in gene therapy-  Our personal choice is usually an antibiotic such as teracycline (something our body and other animals don't make)- in our work we feed tetracycline to our mice that then subdues a blocking gene to allow the specialized gene to function.  

In the case of these fish if lead is present in the water it would subdue a gene that blocking gene allowing the the "red" gene to function and fluoresce.  After a short period the fish would change from it's normal "white" color to it's now "red" color to indicate lead contamination.  

With these fish- you may not even need the black light to view it since they are producing enough of the "red" gene that the normal UV rays in our natural light allow for expression.

Me?  I own them- they're just cool to look at-

What I find interesting is they were originally only suppose to be able to sell them if they were sterile- which no longer seems to be the case.  Hmmm breeding red and green should make yellow fish...  need to get green zebra fish...

A good friend of mine here makes his own green glowing zebra fish for his research- but only their eyes fluoresce!  This trait won't be passed on, but would be really cool if it could!

Oh well, genetically modified fish shouldn't scare anyone here.  Farmers and breeders have been doing it for years, just it took much longer- now science has just sped it up.