New Aquarium Trend? - Fish that glow in the dark by Matt Hennig Courtesy of Matt's free ABC Newsletter available at http://www.aquariumbulletin.com. Aquarticles No, these fish are not painted. They are genetically modified laboratory creations that possess new genes which are expressed to give the fish a luminescent green appearance. The animals below are reported to be medaka fish developed by a Taiwanese aquatics firm Taikong Group. The firm plans to market the fish as pets in the next six months (i.e. by about February/March 2002). The photo is by Simon Kwong/Reuters. The reference for this is given at the bottom of this page. By the way, this photo was probably taken under UV light conditions. Under daylight conditions the fluorescent green would not be quite as striking.
Note that these medaka fish are not the first fluorescent transgenic fish that may be destined for the aquarium hobby. At the recent AQUARAMA 2001 aquatic trade exhibition (held in Singapore from May 31 to June 3, 2001) glow-in-the dark zebra danios (Brachydanio rerio) were displayed. These fish were genetically modified to contain various genes: either from jellyfish that makes them luminous green (with the dark horizontal stripes) or from a sea anemone that makes the fish a luminous red or pink (with the dark stripes). Other colour variants included yellow. The zebra danios were developed at the National University of Singapore. Although these fish were developed as part of a research programme that - among other things - aims to employ them as indicators of water quality (the fish are supposed to change their colour depending on chemicals or pollutants present in the water), their commercial potential as ornamental fish stands to reason. Source: September 8, 2001: http://home.netscape.com/ex/shak/international/galleries/week16/0.html Source: John Dawes. Things to come? In: Aquarist and Pondkeeper, September 2001, p63. |
