New type of "glofish"

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Nate Dogg

Gambusia
MFK Member
Jun 7, 2011
691
1
16
Louisville
I was told they haven't been out long but, glow tiger barbs. They have the jelly fish DNA just like the zebra danios. Sorry no pictures will try to get one soon. Will have to get some its one of my favorite fish but 8$ for such a little fish hard to make it worth it.
 
whats wrong with it? tbh they are just injecting the flourescant jellyfish cells into the fish eggs to make them glow phosphorescently under certain lighting. scientists in Singapore did this with pigs too. originally the practice was for medical research and there was only a matter of time until it reached the pet trade, even so whats the problem? not like they are tattooing the fish or harming them in any way, they are born this way and are more likely to be taken home and given better conditions than the LFS.
 
Makes me wonder why danios are the only ones that come in other colors....
 
Zebra danios have been being used in developmental biology/genetics research since the 1970s so they are a very common and well established model organism in research labs. There are three main reasons why they were the first fish to have a fluorescent transgene inserted into them: 1) we have a lot of knowledge about their genetics, which makes it easy to insert transgenes; 2) they're really easy to house and breed; 3) the insertion of fluorescent transgene is actually legitimately useful for biological research so the project can get funded. Their appearance in the pet trade was just a secondary consequence.

The multi-colored versions are by making fish with 2 different fluorescent transgenes (one red, one green) and developing stable lines from fish expressing different ratios of the two proteins.

This is easier to do with zebrafish because of their easy and fast reproductive cycles, but it's probably only a matter of time before someone does it with other fish (assuming they think they'll be able to make enough money selling them to justify the development costs).
 
tbh they are just injecting the flourescant jellyfish cells into the fish eggs to make them glow phosphorescently under certain lighting.

Minor correction - they are not made by injecting fluorescent jellyfish cells, they are made by inserting fluorescent genes (either from jellyfish or a kind of sea polyp) into the zebrafish cells. Also, the glow is fluorescent, not phosphorescent.
 
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