Tropical Fish Forums
Aquarium fishkeeping around the world!
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Flame Angel
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Joined: 07 Nov 2006
Location: Sydney, Australia
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 Posted: 2011.02.14(Mon)23:00 Post subject: |
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Okay apparently they extracted it from a type of jellyfish originally...
| Quote: | | It started off innocently enough when a professor at National Taiwan University extracted a fluorescent protein from a jellyfish and inserted it into the genome of a zebra fish. He was hoping to make the organs of the zebra fish easier to see when he studied them, but to his amazement, the entire fish began glowing. |
Little bit of info on that here
I read somewhere else the first zebra danios genetically modified in this way were all green, but they then used different proteins from other animals (I think coral and a different jellyfish) for red and yellow. Also they tried to basically create a fish that would glow in the presence of environmental toxins, I.e. act as an indicator for detecting pollution.
Apparently they have been around since 2003/04, didn't even know! Seem to be a lot more species available now too (obviously like the angels in the original video here). Think I saw glowing convicts will be available next year too.
Very interesting stuff! |
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Flame Angel
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Joined: 07 Nov 2006
Location: Sydney, Australia
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| Posted: 2011.02.14(Mon)23:09 Post subject: |
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Or you can just go on the GloFish website which tells you a whole bunch! 
http://www.glofish.com/faq.asp
Obviously its very bias when it comes to the ethics and everything like that though... |
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Flame Angel
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Joined: 07 Nov 2006
Location: Sydney, Australia
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| Posted: 2011.03.28(Mon)22:44 Post subject: |
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Came across something for uni which made me think of this again.
Talking about 'fluorescence recovery after photo-bleaching' (FRAP) and 'green fluorescent (hydrid) protein' (GFP).
This video gives some info on the background of GFP:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl2PRHGpYuU
Do you think they use the same protein for aquarium fish? |
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keithkyli
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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| Posted: 2011.04.05(Tue)22:54 Post subject: |
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They "simply" copy and paste the gene for GFP(green)/RFP(red)/YFP(yellow) into the fish they want. There is no on and off, it's always there, but if these fish reproduce with wild stock then the florescence protein gene will be gradually removed because the glowing fish will be easy target for predators.
I have red glowing zebra danios (males) and "failed experiment" danios (females) at home...the "failed experiment" ones are basically carrying the natural coat but their muscles are red. I bought them as tank starters and now they're fat. They even managed to spawn and give rise to fry but my angels quickly finished them off. 
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Diamond Hill, Hong Kong |
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