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Fish Changes Colors When Detecting Pollution
Ant writes: "Say goodbye to Birkenstock sandals and woolly jumpers -- tomorrow's eco-warrior will like nothing better than swimming naked in defense of
cleaner oceans.
That, at least, is the hope of researchers in Singapore, who are
developing a breed of fish capable of detecting water pollutants by
changing color."
Why not make humans change the color of their skin when they are aground polutants? What are we afraid of?? Having blue people?
Only 'flamers' flame!
If you ask me, this is a superb idea, as long as the fish can survive in the waters you release them.
Basically, this isn't harming anyone or anything. The fish have been manipulated once, and have very little advantage over other fish in the water. In fact, they probably have no advantage, being that they aren't conscious enough to realize that they're changing color in a certain amount of pollutant.
However, if we're releasing fish into waters they'll surely die just to see, visually, on their new color coded scales, that they'll die... I think that's wrong.
I disagree with the dude who said he was a fish breeder and that he doesn't understand how we evil humans can be altering nature to better suit us. He goes so far as to suggest genetic experiments on humans. Counterpoint: This is an operation useful to human society AND ecological wellbeing, as once the fish in the water can show us where the water is polluted, they can also show us where we need to direct cleaning and research.
Genetic Engineering is one of the most useful and dangerous sciences of our times. Everything with a purpose is dangerous - we just need to be careful.
this is not something that needs to be created/solved through bioengineering. There are many, *many* plants called phytoindicators that change in response to environmental factors. Chinese Maple is a good example, whose leaves change from maroon to green in the presence of lots of nitrogen in the soil. You'll find this a lot when someoen has then in their garden and the fertilize with an artificial fertilizer which doe slittle but burn the soil.....
this is all 'old knowledge' - as in ~6000+ yr and started mostly with the natives of the American continents. It's a shame that this part of the world seems to be mostly ignored
-shpoffo
Just wanted to add a comment on the use of fish in testing water. When discharging waste water, whether from municipal or industrial treatment plants, there are requirements that certain types of tests be performed.
These assays are designed to measure some specific parameter or contaminant in the water, using the usual techniques of analytical chemistry.
However, after testing for specific contaminants, some facilities will then do a "canary in a coal mine" assay, rearing fish in the water to check for overall health. The species used might vary, but will usually be commercially available fish that can breed easily in captivity, so many kinds of common aquarium fish are used, of which the zebrafish is one example. Another bonus of using zebrafish is that the this species of fish is considered a "standard" laboratory animal, like rats and mice, and so the genetics and physiology of the fish has been studied in detail.
Rather than releasing these fish into the wild, I got the impression that these genetically engineered fish would be used to augment this last type of testing in the laboratory, since the fluorescent indicators could be linked to more specific indicators of some aspect of the fish's health.
Actually this could be a handy way to quickly assess the health of your aquaculture system.
...
You might not want to engineer your crop, but you could collocate, or segregate, some sort of indicator fish which would tell you if water quality is getting poor. It might save on expensive test kits, which would only need to be dragged out when your fish start turning magenta, green, blue, or pretty polka-dot, stripey, fractal patterned.
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Zebrafish are pretty hardy. Maybe you could just sell them to kids in the ornamental (aquarium) trade. Then you could sell them a bunch of eyedropper chemicals (where you make your real margin), that they can drip in to the tank to change the color of their fish for that day.
Throw in an e-Paper aquarium backdrop, and you could have a winning combination in time for Christmas 2002
O=='=++
First, let me say that I don't really believe in the evils of transgenic manipulation; I fully feel that this is a technology that has its place in the world and will be fundamental to how humanity copes with growing populations in the future.
However, the article says: The Singapore team is working toward producing fish that give off a different-colored glow depending on water temperature, which may lead to using fluorescent fish as temperature indicators.
Wow. They're going to replace a common, cheap, nondestructive technology (thermometers) with living beings. This kind of meddling strikes me as particularly naive; doing science for science's sake with no attention paid to consequences. I really don't see the benefit of this; it strikes me as particularly mad scientist and unethical. Am I out in left-field, or does anyone else agree?
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
Aren't fish already sensitive to polluted waters ? Heck, we humans turn bluish/green when surrounded by chain-smokers.. I'm pretty sure fish have similar reactions when their environment is hostile to their health.
Or you could just look for dead yet unmutilated fish, that's a sure sign.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
In countries such as Indonesia, test kits for measuring pollutants are not readily available. The other thing to consider is how expensive such pollution-sensitive fish will be?
Regarding native fish, it is highly unlikely these hybridized fish will be able to successfully mate and reproduce with other native fish.
Then there are the ethical issues of introducing "altered" species of fish into our waterways. When looking at this issue, one needs to consider how much we humans have already altered our waterways through habitat destruction and pollutants. We're just adding another one of our "creations". As our knowledge of genetics increases, we will begin to see many other examples of lifeforms altered to serve a function they were never inteneded for.