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Genetically Engineered Pets Hit the Market
psoriac writes "According to this article the Taiwanese Taikong Corporation is starting to sell "Night Pearls" - zebrafish that glow in different red and green patterns thanks to genes from jellyfish and marine coral. US sales are expected to follow."
I totally agree - it is certainly not a bad thing. This is only a more extreme form of the kind of "genetic engineering" that has been going on for thousands of years with cats, dogs, cattle, and other species that have close relationships with humans (either as food or pets). By selectively breeding pets, they enhance certain traits. Granted, this technology introduces genese that are not present in any form (most likley) in the host - I think that as long as there is no serious adverse effect to the organism then great. And if for some reason it does get into the wild, and decides to overrun the natural population - even better. It means that the gene that was introduced gave the new species a selective advantage over its predecessors. And isn't that what evolution (in any form, by any mechanism) is all about?
Seriously, if I could afford to create such an environment and the equipment needed to get the fishes from the ocean and into it (which to the best of my knowledge noone has ever done)
On the contrary, the Monterey Bay Aquarium has quite a few deep sea creatures in pressurised tanks/displays. I don't know how they clean them though.
Ender
Nothing to see here
Did some googling found pictures and more information here : http://www.mongabay.com/external/glowing_fish.htm
The Taikong Corporation has info on the fish on their Azoo site. Unfortunately, it appears to only be in Chinese, but you can get the idea from the pictures.
Here are several stories and pictures of the fish.
The pictures (and other sites such as this one) imply that they are "fluorescent" fish, i.e., they glow when bathed in UV light, as opposed to fish that glow without a UV light source.