Interesting, so I thought I'd share...

[Monkeyfish]

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/12/13/514602.aspx?GT1=10645

 

[billsreef]

They are getting carried away with that gene

 

[tydtran]

Someone mentioned to me that in Europe, they're engineering fish with various fluorescent proteins to produce new color variants.

 

[yeahcheetah]

Technically this is not hard to do.

 

[rama]

Pretty interesting. Soon they'll make glowing humans

 

[billsreef]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11383294#post11383294 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by tydtran
Someone mentioned to me that in Europe, they're engineering fish with various fluorescent proteins to produce new color variants.

They are already doing that in Asia with Zebra Danio's being marketed to the FW crowd as "Glo Fish".

 

[greggnyce]

They have the Glo Fish at country critters.

 

[bulfraw215]

The glow fish was developed by a company in texas and a fish farm in florida has a contract to grow them by the millions

 

[billsreef]

Interesting. When they first started hitting the market in the US it was all Asian grown fish that "licensed" two US importers to bring them into the US. One of those importers is Segrest in Florida and another is one of the LA wholesalers. Haven't been paying them much attention since and didn't realize any US farmers are now growing them.

 

[tydtran]

I wonder what the legality issue is here. To genetically modify crops and food animals, you have a lot of regulatory steps. Does anyone know if anything applies to animals kept as pets. The issue as I see it is that there are plenty of "pets" that end up being released into the wild. I get nervous about genetically modified additions to the wild.

 

[puckbs]

Tydtran - i agree, but something tells me small glowing fish won't last very long in the wild

 

[tydtran]

Good point, puckbs, although the ability of animals to exploit particular ecological niches is amazing. Bright colors in nature are usually a sign to stay away. It'd be an interesting experiment to see how other fish respond to a glowing red or green fish in the aquarium.