Genetically-Engineered Death Carp

angkor writes "Kinda cool... Carp that produce only male offspring. They do something like this with sterile fruitflies as well."

Comments

I'm taking a genetics class in highschool...

[Ieshan]

And this seems like an awefully ridiculous way to cure the problem of Carp.

First of all, the fish that can't produce females have to have a reproductive advantage. By this, I mean that the fish have to get to the eggs "first" or gain preferential mating, otherwise, say, after the first year, the percentage of daughterless carp will be the same as the year before. Why would it change?

Not only this, but since half of the zygote has normal genes (presumably, they're treating males - females wouldn't be alive in the second generation to pass on the 'bad' genes) - there's no way to really eradicate the fish. Basically, it's like this: Say you have 500 people, 250 of which are male, 250 of which are female. 50 of those males can't have female offspring because of a genetic defect. 200 of those males can. Not only will they have normal female offspring, but the 200 males will also have 'un-tainted' male offspring. In the f2, then, the ratios don't neccessarily change towards the better - half of the fertilized fish are normal males and the female population is slightly reduced - however, all of those females can mate with normal males and have more females.

This will take YEARS to have a noticeable effect on the Carp population. The ratio of 1/5 carp with that daughterless gene is ridiculously high, they'd have to release thousands of the fish into the wild and drastically *increase* the population in order to decrease it. This article sounds more like sensationalism than science.

Just my opinion.