Slashdot Mirror
Glowing Fish are First Genetically Engineered Pets
securitas writes "It was bound to happen. Texas-based biotechnology company Yorktown Technologies will start selling a 'genetically engineered aquarium fish that glows in the dark.' The trademarked GloFish -- 'a tropical zebra fish infused with the gene of a sea anemone that makes it glow fluorescent red' -- is first genetically engineered pet. The possible consequences of introducing a new trangenic species into the environment has touched off a debate that has critics such as the National Academies of Science and the Center for Food Safety calling for a ban on the sale of the fish unless the FDA regulates and approves it. The fish go on sale in January 2004. You can see photos of the GloFish here. Cool, but it's no Blinky." M : I think these guys are marketing the fish for a Taiwanese company.
Yummy fisheys! I wonder if they're poison to humans...
I mean, what if they accidentially engineered it with some buthane generating cells, so that it catches fire... Oh wait, it don't burn anything...
Assembling etherkillers for fun an profit
From their FAQ:
What if a fluorescent zebra fish is eaten? Eating a fluorescent zebra fish is the same as eating any other zebra fish. Their fluorescence is derived from a naturally occurring gene and is completely safe for the environment. Just as eating a blue fish would not turn a predator blue, eating a fluorescent fish would not make a predator fluoresce.
Bummer, I was hoping to see fluorescent cats!
You should use AdiumX on your Mac.
I've had about 5 fish, only one of them lived longer than a week.
With a few of these and one of these you'd have a way cool case.
Who needs cold cathodes?
Looks like they were running the server on a Glofish.
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
You know, this has gone too far. Genetic engineering just for the heck of it? What purpose do a glowing fish have?
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
The fish are sterilized. No Problems here...
Ahh, so this GlowFish will replace OpenBSD's BlowFish and be the new mascotte? Way cool.
Glowing Fish are First Genetically Engineered Pets
;-)
I bet cats will indirectly become the second
This is old news. These may be other glowing fish, as they are from Taiwan, but you can get the details
Here or here
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
This should torment cats at night.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Till they come out with a 5 assed monkey thank you very much.
1 monkey.
5 asses.
is it so much to ask for?
I, for one, look forward to our new glowing fish overlords
Frankenguppy.
I ,for one, WELCOME our new glowfish overlords.
I suspect the first genetically engineered pets were dogs or possibly cats.
Ermm, maybe the moderators need to RTFA!?!?
Last I checked 5 assed monkeys were a GM pet.
according to the Me Boy Pedo Site, you are wrong
This sounds a lot like what happened here at the Univeristy of Hawaii. They cloned mice and threw in a little jellyfish in the process to make the mice flourescent. "Four of the mice are fluorescent; they glow green under black light. The glow comes from modified gene protein from jellyfish, which "is a quick demonstration that they are transgenic," said researcher Istefo Moisyadi."
. ht ml
http://starbulletin.com/2001/02/06/news/story11
Couldn't they have chosen a better color than red? I just have this image of a kid curled up in bed at night, unable to sleep staring at this ominous red glowing fish all night.
I'm waiting for a cool genetically-engineered pet, like a saber-tooth tiger (preferrably, to borrow a line, "Identical in every way, but 1/8 the size"). Now that would be worth having!
Every cloud has a silver lining (except for the mushroom shaped ones, which have a lining of Iridium & Strontium 90)
GloFish, eh? I think I'll wait for Dopefish to be available as pet.
YES YES YES!!! I want some of these....
That's great. That's what genetic engineering should be used for, instead of creating the megaton cow... glowing fish... how nice. Nuke them till they glow and fish them in the dark.
Look here (and following cartoons :))
The methods used may be different but just about every breed of dog known to Man has been 'genetically engineered.' For example, I have a Boston Terrier. The Boston was created in 1857 as a dog fighter by breeding English Bulldogs and English Terriers. Therefore, the Boston was engineered. Take any dog and you'll find that someone wanted a dog that could do this or that or was such a size so they went about selecting different existing species and breeding them to create their perfect dog. So many people think that genetic engineering is done with test tubes but any time two species are brought together artificially you are engineering genetics. Mendel was a genetic engineer and he lived in the 1100s.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
Now if only they could engineer themselves up a server that could take more than 100 hits/minute.
Holy crapola
Chaos will always win out over order because chaos is more organized
I'm a little disappointed. These aren't bioluminescent-type glow-in-the-dark fish like the ones that live in the deep sea. They're fluorescent glow-in-the-UV fish like the ones that live in the rave.
The possible consequences of introducing a new trangenic species into the environment has touched off a debate that has critics such as the National Academies of Science and the Center for Food Safety calling for a ban on the sale of the fish
What? Do they expect the glofish to jump out of aquariums and wreak havoc everywhere?
While injecting aquarium fish to change their colours is not new, (as we see here) nor is breeding them into untenable forms, the direct genetic manipulation producing the glofish poses more far reaching concerns. Animal cruelty is a serious issue, don't get me wrong. I think that GMOs are far more of a threat. The company claims that the glofish will not harm animals that eat it, nor secrete into the water any harmful substances. Let's see the 10 year study.
Pet Rocks?
Subduction leads to orogeny
..if the genetical information of these fish are altered to produce this glowing behaviour, what happens when they breed with "normal" fish or even fish from a different species (as it happens sometimes). Would these have this glowing behaviour as well? What if this new behavious helps these fish to get eaten less by predators (glowing / strong colors often means "dangerous, I'm poisonous" in the animal world if I recall correctly), could it then be that these fish quickly replace their "unenhanced" counterparts?
My girlfriend is a molecular biologist who worked for a time in a lab where they made glowing animals like this ( mostly worms, but they had some rats also ). The reason, scientifically, for making these creatures is not just for the sake of seeing if you can make them glow. Rather, if you attach the genes for the glowing proteins adjacent to the genes for some other protein you'd like to monitor in the animal's DNA, then the glowing protein will become attached to the target protein, and you can get a snapshot of how active that protein is in the organism by simply turning on a UV light. This is a very useful tool for seeing how a particular gene is expressed in the active biology of the organism, because you can watch where, when and how the proteins which that gene codes for are expressed, and in what cells. The glowing pets is just some creepy Frankensteinian commercial spin-off of this research tool.
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
I've wondered about the Lian-Li aquarium PC case. It comes with five plastic regular fish, all shaped the same, and one plastic percula. Did they put in a percula just because of Disney/Pixar Finding Nemo?
Will I retire or break 10K?
That aside, the reason these fish are being trumpted as "genetically engineered" while dogs are not are because tropical zebra fish cannot breed with sea anemones in nature; the genes have artifically introduced in order to produce the new "glowing" variant.
The bold print giveth, and the fine print taketh away
It's relly to bad that some won't have a single geneticly altered item without rasing havoc. We have been altering plants for centuries by cross breeding. This results in a new type of plant that the changed genes are not controlled. I find that far more disturbing than changing one gene that has a known effect on an organism.
I realise that there will be things that are genetically altered for the worse. They will either be an experiment or from the mind of someone who intends to do wrong. this is where the line should be drawn... for those who intend to do harm with genetics. Otherwise it is intended for the betterment of society.
All of the stories you've heard about the genetically altered badities - the Hulk, the tenage mutant ninja turtles, the monkey with 4 asses... are just that, stories. Until the haze of negativity is lifted from genetics we can only make small steps, like making fish glow.
The original generic sig.
Ahhh the good ol' days. Quake I mods and the houngan helpers, shub hat and death orb. THE DOPEFISH RULES
i'll keep these fish in my Cubequarium, quite the neon case mod if you ask me.
We all know that these genetically engineered glowing fish are evil!
I want glow-in-the-dark anchovies so I can watch LOTR in the dark and still eat pizza!
TT
Huh? The Food and Drug Administration needs to approve pets?
I think I'll genetically engineer one and call mine Nemo. Nemo will have the gift of breathing when not in water. Then I will engineer the water to be breathable by humans and we can visit each other!! Maybe then I'll engineer a cow into a horse. Yeah sure, why should I have to buy an animal that someone like God created. What would he know??
What would be really neat would be to be able to control the glow, so cat walks on by and fish pulses (extra kudos if the pulses go -X-X-X--X-X-X-X--X-X--XX-, X=pulse, repeating) and gentle mac-standby-button pulsing for normal behaviour :-)
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
This has been known about for quite some time. This is just an article about people bitching about it.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Glowing pets seen Here
M: I think these guys are marketing the fish for a Taiwanese company.
That your new way to tell us this is a dupe?
researchers are working on others, including an allergen-free cat.
They've already done fluorescence with mice, I believe. And glow-in-the-dark cats would be useful, so cars can see them as they dart across the street.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
"Species" is really more of a 'soft' term then any strict definition. After all, we use the word for asexually reproducing organisms as well.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
These "GloFish" DO NOT glow in the dark. They fluoresce red under a black light (UV radiation, for those of us who care). But from everything I've read, they don't emit any light at all in the absence of external UV. None. So, that pretty much makes them "Glow-in-the-LIGHT fish."
Now, I'm not entirely suprised that the NYTimes doesn't understand that difference, but slashdotters should be able to.
--Use this space for notes--
There's a difference between breeding which requires two animals that can naturally have sex with each other to mix genes naturally...
(Two people of a different race having children isn't genetic engineering.)
And genetic engineering which completely removes the neccessity for having two creatures have sex to mix the genes. The entire process is dependent on human intervention.
The former is natural selection. The latter is intelligent design.
This fish was given genes from a species it could never naturally mate with. Dogs were mated with other dogs they could naturally mate with.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
All of the fish sold by this company are infertal.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Will they sue me for copyright infringement if my GloFishes breed ? I'm pretty sure Monstanto would (they already do over grain).
I can see the "SCO sues over GloFishes' IP" jokes already. But think about it: med labs will eventually come up with gene therapies for more common genetic illnesses (glaucoma, some forms of diabetes, etc...). That would mean patients treated with such therapies would hold some the labs' copyrighted DNA in their body, which would get replicated on ARN and transmitted, etc... Will they have to pay lifelong royalties ? SHOULD they have to ?
Maybe we deserve this world ?
They actually call them GloFish(tm)! Ok im not going to go into why stringing two words together and capitalising them and abreviating glow into glo is really pretentious and annoying, but fucking trade marking an organism?!?!?! there are so many laws on what you can and cant do, you cant even research into potentially life saving stem cells, but you can trade mark organisms and dna/genomes???!?! the politicians better get off their fat, over paid (bribes) asses and get to work.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
and thanks for all the radiation.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
I for one welcome our new glowing genetically modified fish masters.
this is so ooold..
I created glofish before, I took a stick of radium and placed it next to the fish tank.
the fish glowed for about 3 seconds, then the water started to boil, they instantly lost all their flesh and I became sterile.
- They breed like wildfire and are easy to raise in large numbers. (Imagine a big, big wall of fishtanks.)
- Their embryos are a convenient size and are completely transparent - you can see every organ in their bodies.
- You can watch the embryos continuously under the microscope for hours, or even days, at a time. (This is not true of, say, mouse embryos, which tend to become very unhappy once they are removed from the mother mouse.)
Of course, the fish used for science usually aren't designed to glow all over their bodies, all the time. That's fun for pets, but not very interesting. What scientists do is:- Find some protein that they think is important, like growth hormone.
- Find the gene for that protein. For human genes, you can do the equivalent of a Google search through the entire human genome. If you want the equivalent gene in zebrafish, you can take advantage of the zebrafish genome archives. There are also complete genomes for mice, Drosophila (fruit flies) and other creatures that are popular with scientists.
- Make a copy of the promoter for your interesting gene. (Genes, like email messages, are controlled by their headers. In genetics these headers are called "promoters". Basically, when the promoter gets activated, the cell starts to transcribe the gene and begins to produce the protein which the gene encodes.)
- Attach your copied promoter to the gene for a fluorescent protein (the most popular protein is Green Fluorescent Protein, known as GFP - but there are red, cyan and yellow ones as well.)
- Insert your new promoter+gene into an egg cell and grow a creature. Breed it a lot. Inbreed its offspring a lot until you have an extended family of genetically engineered creatures.
Now you have a creature which glows green or red only in the cells which are producing growth hormone. There are now dozens of strains of fish like this, each with a different promoter controlling the glow. And there are dozens of strains of mice as well.My lab uses transgenic, fluorescent mice to study how blood vessels grow. We are trying to learn how to prevent blood vessels from growing into tumors...
Yes Morgahastu. I reall like your moral compass. You sound like the kind of person that would like to kill people with a new weapon so you can discover a medical treatment for that weapon. Please. Thats dishonnest. I fou want to raise awareness for genetic engineering for heath purposes then one should simply talk to those people not in the know and TELL them. -they should not develop pointless god craving capabilities and tamper with nature for NO reaon what so ever.
didn't i read about glow-in-the-dark rabbits a few years back?
I just know that the next generation of people will all have glowing yankers or tits. Spam is gonna get weird.
Table-ized A.I.
Cats are being genetically engineered to make them hypo-allergenic. I would love to see a follow-up on the above article, it's been a year and I want my non-sniffly cats soon please!
It was common practice for slave owners to breed different humans to get a stronger worker (ie. African American slaves are a prime example, plantation owners would breed the strongest tallest male with an equally strong female.)
Although a primitive form, this is genetic engineering.
when we have scientists working on such critical usages of DNA technology, i can see why choosing glowing fish over curing deadly diseases is so critical to humanity
All the hysteria about genetic engineered beasties is just crazy. So what if they escape? It's just more biodiversity. So what if they replace native populations of lesser-splodged-mudslurpers? That's evolution in action, baby!
Glowy fish are good! I want some!
I can assure the world that I am Mostly Harmless.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Personally, I'm waiting for cabbits. But only the ones that transform into either spacecraft or mechas.
[Insert pithy quote here]
A bunch of people on here sound like they aren't that opposed to gen-mod pets, but a glowing fish isn't really that cool right? My buddy and I have been working on ideas for genetically miniturizing mammals, and think we can probably do it...Who out there would be interested in say a pygmy elephant? of coarse it would have it's draw backs....even a pygmy elephant is going to have pretty large poop. and it might be able to get into your fridge and drink your beer....any thoughts?
I know someone who made a glow in the dark mouse. Shorter life span made it a great pet. The kid gets board about the same time it dies. No joke, he really did this.
-Tim Louden
tom hall is a game designer like you or I am a game designer - our best ideas are conceived on the crapper, and flushed into nothingness soon thereafter
If you eat the fish, and go to the washroom, will it glow in the dark? Cuz I'm pretty sure that would be somewhat spooky to leave there in the dark :)
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
I don't think these are the first GM fish to go on sale. The Taikong Corporation, a Taiwanese company, marketed Gong's TK1 GM Zebra fish earlier in the year according to Practical Fishkeeping magazine. http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/pfk/pages/it em.php?news=22
These fish are still (as far as I know) awaiting licensing in Singapore (one of the world's biggest producers of tropical fish) and one company has been prosecuted for importing them.
http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/pfk/pages/it em.php?news=56
can someone please tell me what the FDA has to do with it? It's just more anti-GM paranoia.
The antis are worried about what might happen when these fish are released into the wild, as inevitably happens to a fair proportion of any pet species. You may not be going to eat the things, but predators are. And you might end up eating one of the predators. Hence the FDA connection.
It's paranoia, perhaps, but it's a question that's worth asking nonetheless. If the sellers can convince the authorities that the fish are safe, then the paranoid are left without a leg to stand on. Why don't you want this to happen? I don't for a moment believe that you're secretly worried that they'll turn out not to be safe, so what is your reason for not wanting anyone to certify that they are?
doop-doopdoopdoop-dooooop!
Coming soon: Glo-dog, Cat-terpiller, Bird-ctopus.
Even if a few sexually active specimen get into the wild, I doubt a fish that is unable to turn off its "come and eat me" sign is going to last long enough to find a mate that isn't already scared-off by the horny lightbulb trying to have sex with it.
= 9J =
The World's First Glowing Transgenic Fish Display at the Biotaiwan Exhibition in Taipei
:)
Texas = slow
I am not saying "all GM is good, let's go" - quite the contrary:
The mindless anti-GM zelots can prevent things that really help - I would love to see a GM crop that fixed nitrogen like a legume, yielded lots of bio-desiel and plastic precursors, and could be grown year after year in brackish soil, concentrating the salt in the stalks - imagine the boost to the environment and the boost to the third world farmer! But you can bet that, even if an RMS-inspired botanist created such a crop and released it free of charge (think George Washington Carver), the mindless anti-GMers would prevent it from seeing the light of day!
In short, BE worried about things, but have a clearly reasoned, well thought through idea of WHY you are worried - not just because the thing has "scary" words in it like "genetically modified", "nuclear", or "diesel"!
www.eFax.com are spammers
I understand that most GM crops are sterilized so they cannot reproduce, so how about sterilizing the fish as well? This should alleviate any concern about reproduction and them taking over the natural populations.
And it's probably a good thing for the people who created them that they are. Danios (these fish are more correctly referred to as "zebra danios") are incredibly easy to breed, and if they weren't sterile, you'd see them at Wal-Mart for twenty-seven cents plus tax soon. However, I've never seen this sort of thing before - fish are all pretty "open source" and breeders are pretty much allowed to do as they please with them. I can't help but thinking that excessive use of forced copyright (via sterilization), like this, could easily put fish breeders out of business.
Much better for the individual fish.
I want glow-in-the-dark anchovies so I can watch LOTR in the dark and still eat pizza!
But wouldn't you need one ring on the pizza pan to keep the pizza from falling apart? You know, to bring the ingredients together and in the darkness bind them? (Or was that olive oil?)
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
In the summary of the article, douchebag.
the idea isn't new: userfriendly.org, the world's
best online comic strip, has advocated the
EvilPhish(TM)
a couple of weeks ago...
My Karma isn't excellent, damn it! (And
Dang, and here I was thinking I could make my belly glow.
You Disco Stu from Austin by any chance?
TT
Zebra fish are difficult, but not impossible for the hobbyist to breed, what happens then?
Since the fish is covered by patent, what happens to the next generations? Are aquarists going to fall into the same trap as farmers, where they can't replant patented products?
Who wants to join my GNU/Fish project ?
I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is an imaginary number. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and dial again.
This is slightly off, but there are a class of people out there interested in "enhancing" their bodies in different ways (to the point of deformity, even). Now consider if these people begin futzing with their genetic structure(s). Glowing people? They already did the glowing gene (perhaps a different one) with a Tobacco plant (was never released to the public). Gives new meaning to the term "One-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater" :-)
... they offer a monkey with four asses.
According to one of the articles:
They also plan to introduce multicolour fluorescent pet fish, including red, purple and blue.
It would be interesting to see where the gene is being added. If it were in the right place (skin development) then you could have stripy glow-in-the-dark fish.
Maybe it would be better if we stopped toying with nature. Maybe we should leave the four-assed monkeys schematics alone and let nature take its course...
I am dead serious, by the way.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
Yes, bummer indeed. When I first saw this post I thought they had created transgenic fish with luciferase, the enzyme that makes fireflies glow. Scientists have been inserting that into all sorts of critters recently for legitimate bioassay purposes. This BBC page has a number of exambles of both flourescent (using jellyfish proteins like these fish) and truly glow-in-the-dark critters.
Can I get my children genetically modified to glow as well? It would make keeping up with them at night at Disney World so much easier.
Aquarium fish have been "genetically engineered" before anyone knew anything about DNA. They've also been doing things like injecting eye-catching dyes into fish for a number of years as well.
Is it really necessary to involve the FDA? As near as I can tell, the intent of this product is neither food nor drug. This begs the question: What stake does the FDA have in determining whether this product is safe? One could argue that since it is possible for the fish to be ingested, the FDA needs to make sure that it is 100% safe to do so. However, with that reasoning, the FDA would also be testing paste, because there will invariably be, in every kindergarten, a child who eats that. So if the FDA needs to get involved in this, we should probably let the RIAA lobby for rights management, stating that you can only view the fluorescense of the fish under an officially licensed UV light under penalty of legal action.
No. The real problem is that this is insidious. It's taking technology which is potentially very dangerous and making it feel warm and fuzzy (err, ok, cold and slimy -- but still). This is the problem with this fish. It encourages a laissez-faire attitude about genetically modified organisms -- and I for one don't believe that they should be treated like toys.
One of the problems with genetically modified organisms is that humans themselves are not a homogenous population. What causes no problems for one set of people may make another population seriously ill or kill them (see allergies). In general with normal, unaltered vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, grains, whatever, you know what you're buying. With GMOs you really don't. Do you know what kind of gene the corn in the tortilla chips you ate was crossed with? Nope? I'm not surprised.
I, for one, welcome our glowing, aquatic overlords
Nature has little trouble doing this. There are, for example, swarms of tiny luminescent fish in the Caribbean, which I've seen on a Windjammer cruise.
The captain, commenting on them, pointed out that the ship's toilets were seawater-flushed, "So you can put your head right down in the bowl and flush. It's an AMAZING sight."
rj
In this instance it was a "work of art", and the rabbit was transformed using GFP (green fluorescent protein, originally from jellyfish). Oh, and Alba looks perfectly normal, except when you shine UV light on her, then she glows green.
What I would like to see is tropical/salt water fish engineered to live in fresh water tanks. Salt water tanks are fricken hard to take care of. Hard and expensive to start. Salt water fish can be very nice to have, and are generally MUCH more colourfull than fresh water fish.
:)
The pictures of these fish..kind of neet I guess, but it really still looks like a boring fish.
Google images gives you the general idea.
If you could get fish like this in a easy to maintain fresh-water tank, it would be a great jump for joe-shmoes like me wanting to have a nice fish tank without the hassle of trying get a salt-water tank going.
HEAR THAT genetic engineers! do it!
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
I'm going to need a new box of crayons now that "salmon" has a cousin.
glow fish!
You could have selective breeding of tropical fish for generations, and would not get the healthy glow of the transgenic zebra fishes. They received a gene of another specie, an anemona, something that would never happen on a natural enviroment.
To produce transgenic animals and vegetables, you use diferent techniques than selective breeding, altough the results are similar. As this post has pointed out, it is an engeneering field that is still giving its small baby steps. I think the future of genetic engeneering is bright and experiments like these must be encouraged, but societies also have to be carefull and allow the introduction of GMOs only after their safety is proved.
So if I go to a rave now, instead of glow sticks, will I see people waving around fish sticks?
Zebra fish are easy enough to breed.
How are they going to keep knock-off copies off
the market? And yes, there is plenty of fish-swapping in the aquarium hobby.
A couple of years back (in 2000, I think) and artist by the name of Eduardo Kac created the first glowing animal. Known as Alba the GFP Bunny, it was created as the first in a series of what he calls transgenic artwork. [http://www.ekac.org/gfpbunny.html]
I'm a lvl25 Artist in the game of Life (tm)
Quoted from Yosemite Sam: I hate rabbits
I feel cojoco's pain.
I make a point of introducing every genetically modified ANYTHING I can get my hands on into the wild. Don't like it? Too bad. I doubt I'm the only one.
This is the first time I'll be setting loose anything that's non-plant and bigger than the head of a pin though. Whoohoo!
Uhm, it wasn't a company in Texas that made the breakthrough, it was a company in Taiwan, and they did it 5 months ago. I recall reading an article about it on the BBC.
Beware blue cats moving at
we had to take a fish and stuff flashlights down it's mouth to make them glow...and we liked it!
I have a rather large kitty-cat, and I doubt anyone could fix him up to glow in the dark without getting into a heap of trouble. He loves me, and is gentle around me to the extreme, except when he wants to go out and enjoy "Squirrel Season". This cat is so big that I have a Dog House for him to nap in during the day when I'm away. Complete with a carpeted floor, with hay, and a big blanket on top of that. Cats nap a lot, you know.
Tonight, my school cafeteria (residential school) had processed fish samwiches that glowed. Perhaps this will shed some light on the matter...
Ah, the joys of glowing fish. Now, not only will my fish tank's filter and aerator make noise all night, but the glowing fish will also keep me awake!
Why can't they make glow-in-the-dark ferrets? That way, the things can't hide in my clothes/bed/tower as well
"73% of quotes on the Internet are made up" -Ben Franklin
Your favorite Case Modding shop!!! i seriously cant wait to put one of those in my water cooling tank!!! or maybe in the window.
Don't you remember Jurassic Park??
'Nature will find a way'
Holy Glowing Gargantuans Batman, 100 foot glowing T-RexGloFish(tm)!!!
Burma?
I feel that you are being quite short-sighted by posing this question. To ask a question like this is akin to asking why people hang up Escher prints on their walls or why programmers go home after work and work on their own pet projects.
What purpose does a glow-in-the-dark pet have?
What purpose does a Siamese cat have? It's animal breeding just for the heck of it.
What purpose does a photograph exposition have? It's taking pictures just for the heck of it.
What purpose does a symphony have? It's music just for the heck of it.
"Max, come over here. French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone." - Dutch Schultz
A small nitpick regarding your terminology: two organisms that are able to breed to produce offspring are by definition the same species.
Incorrect. There are breeds of dog that cannot safely interbreed, yet they are all considered the same species. On the other hand, cross-species breeding can happen -- horses and donkeys, lions and tigers, and several "jungle" cats with domestic cats can, even sometimes producing fertile offspring.
(And that, of course, doesn't even consider the vast numbers of asexually reproducing species that such a definition couldn't even possibly apply to, or things like goat-sheep and quail-chick tetragametic chimeras.)
A species is whatever the current biological consensus calls a species. Factors like if crossbreeds occur naturally or normally produce fertile offspring for sexually reproducing species are taken into account, but a hard-and-fast definition does not and cannot exist.
in squant?
Townsend's Warbler x Hermit Warbler
...
...
Spotted Owl x Barred owl
And, yes, these are legitimate species. The two warblers have been extensively studied and appear to be two species that have recently (in geologic terms) diverged. The two maintain their reproductive isolation in all but a narrow zone of overlap, and the (rare) hybrids are fertile
And it is even more frequent in plants
There are those that believe that we should stop all genetic engineering research right now because we shouldn't be "playing God." Others think that we cannot afford to stop genetic engineering research as the technology could be used to cure many illnesses and benefit mankind. This is one of the first comercially available genetically modified creature, but it probably won't be the last. Right now it is just a fish. What's next? Genetically modified food? People? Somebody someday will probably want to make sure that their children are smarter than a Nobel prize winner and more beautiful than a model and won't be afraid to fund the research to make it happen.
I don't think we should take the fear of what could happen if this fish or others like it were released into the wild too lightly. Right now there is a plant that was bred to live in aquariums that was released into the wild and is now basically killing much of the native plants and animals that live in the Mediterranean sea. And who could forget the snake fish that was released into a lake in Maryland. Anyone living in Australia I am sure will be able to come up with many examples of what can happen if you introduce even a seemingly innocent animal into an ecosystem where it does not belong. We have screwed up the ecosystem enough times by introducing animals that were cross bred naturally who knows what would happen if we release a creature that was genetically modified by man into the wild. We have to be sure that this fish CANNOT reproduce on its own no matter what happens. And we have to be sure that if you create a genetically modified animal and then sell it to the public one day some idiot is going to release it into the wild. And if there is even the smallest chance that a genetically modified animal can somehow reproduce we have to respect Murphy's law on this and conclude that the fish WILL reproduce.
I personally look at genetic engineering the same way I look at nuclear power. Both have great potential to benefit mankind. Maybe nuclear power can be used to solve the energy crisis, maybe genetic engineering can be used to cure cancer. We should not just dissmiss either technology as being evil. But both are VERY dangerous and could potentially screw up the environment big time -- they could even be used to make it so that planet Earth can no longer support human life.
I personally think that the Glofish is more than just a fish but maybe I am wrong on that one.
The GloFish website says: "just imagine what they will look like under a black light!". My answer: "stressed.". MushyC
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If you carefully look at the pics, the pics were not taken in darkness. There is a light bulb behind the camera throwing light at the fish. *hint: look at the fish that are bent, only the part thats perpendicular to camera is bright*. The pics are deceiving.
...monkeys with four asses....mrrrrrmf
sell these?
So, here's my question. If you get a male one, then a female one and breed them, is that copyright infringment?
Only males or steralized fish will be released for sale. That is how other selectivly breed varieties of fish are sold these days. An example is the "Electric Blue Jack Dempsey". This is a spectacular fish that comes from only one soure. Only males are sold ( at $80 a piece!). BTW, Jack Dempseys are very easy to breed, some might say too easy.
I, for one, welcome our new glowing fish overlords.
/.
BTW, what is that a reference to? I've only seen it on
When are they going to create a pet that clean after themself, earn a living, and make their own food?
I keep checking the comments for a good "5 assed monkey" joke and haven't found one yet. C'mon people, it's a story about genetically engineered pets. It's a softball right up the middle, hit it out of the park!
Getting glowing fish isn't hard.
All I did was install a small nuclear powered filter/circulator I bought from this Russian guy for 2 cases of Vodka.
A week later, I had this badass glowing green fish with 3 eyes.
how's my zigging? diak 1.800.move.zig
I think this glowing zebra fish is a remarkable idea. they should make all zebra fish this way, except the shark.
Signed,
G.W. Shark.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
a school of those!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
welcome our new glowing fish overlord, sliced just so, and placed on a cube of rice.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
...welcome our new glowing fish-lords!
The thing that really bugs me about all this is the fact that this new species has a trademarked name. If someone invents (?) a completely new species, is there automatically a universal scientific name that can be derived?
Will our over-commercialised society one day come to the point where we no longer talk about our cats, dogs, rabbits but instead refer to our GloFish(tm), AquaMice (tm), Psy-Cats(tm), or ElastoBirds(tm)?
...to the fish hobbyists, the scientists, and the company for any fuck ups that result from this. I hope its worth it.
You can argue that GMO crops are perfectly safe and you can argue that it's important to develop them for the benefit of mankind. You cannot, however, argue that it's important to have glow in the dark fucking fish.
All things in moderation; including moderation
Is it just me, or would releasing these fish into the wild be incredible cruel. They would have absolutely zero chance of hiding from any predator. Its true that fish use many senses other than just sight to identify pray, but it still seems to me like this fish would be an evolutionary deadend.
PetSmart had some rather stuffy comments about how there just wasn't a market for these-- hence they wouldn't sell them. With all the other overpriced junk they sell, surely they could throw in a couple of glowing fish-- if only as gourmet cat toys.
Here's their CS email.
http://www.petsmart.com/servlet/Mailer
To heck with goverment regulation, I want to use future nanotech/biotech as an expensive hobby to grow fur, claws etc.. have borg type uploads/coprocessors, save my visual data and mind output in a storage device/whatever. No goverment or religion is going to tell me what I want to do, as long as I don't affect other people, whiners can buz off.
What purpose does a pet fish have?
These fish are flourescent not glowing. It has been pointed out already several times, but why is the article not updated?
I bent the fish until I heard a cracking noise and shook it up, but it didnt start glowing. I want my money back!
Wiil we ever learn?
In many ocassions we have introduced by mistake species completely alien to certain environments that have devastated full habitats, or species.
Who can claim that knows with 100% certainity what will happen when more and more of these species are left in the wild?
It is bad enough to deal with what nature is throwing at us all the time. Our vaccines may become useless in one generation, most insecticides used to control pests may become useles very soon. Do we need new species released for which we can't even think about the consequences?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If you drink enough tonic water (say, in a Gin & Tonic), your urine has so much quinine in it that it will fluoresce under black light.
There was an underground/goth bar I went to a few times that had no lighting in the bathroom except for blacklights. Let me tell you, it's a sight to see (note: for full effect, pee standing up into a bowl).
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Others have already torn apart this metaphor - No need for me to duplicate.
The under current of your post is what I take issue with - this belief that you are in some way "building" a prototype.
A. Taking a BMW and hammering a Ford badge onto it does not equivocate with building a Ford (to continue the tortured analogy). GE is the stereotypical room full of typewriters and monkeys.
B. Any experimentation on living organisms carries a very large burden of responsibility. Not only ethically but also in terms of the threat to the rest of us "wild" organisms.
C. GE research must continue, and our current ignorance highlights the fact. We still have no firm suppositions regarding cross species exchange of genetic material, back-mutations, the possible roles of RNA virii, and any number of other important questions.
Q.
Insert Signature Here
Those who read real books as opposed to computer manuals, may recall that Luther Driggers, John Berendt's frustrated inventor and poison-wielding "eccentric" from "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," tried to invent just such a creature by combining goldfish food with some kind of fluorescent dye. Alas, he succeeded instead in making the fishes' guts glow, much to the disgust of bar patrons of the black-light saturtaed "Purple Tree."
Somewhere in Savannah, a small brown bottle of poison is being considered, to quote Luther, er Berendt: "Sodium fluoroacetate...500 times more lethal than arsenic...the same stuff the Finns dumped down their wells when the Russians invaded in 1939. The water in those wells is still undrinkable."
wags
Tee hee, look at Sir Haxalot struggling to climb out of his self-made karma hole.
That was a FICTIONAL STORY.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
No one. And no one should have to. You don't have 100% certainty in anything - and you will never have.
All you can ask for is a reasonable amount of certainty. I'm not even 100% certain that the sky won't fall on my head today. That does not keep me from leaving my house.
This comment does not exist.
Imagine the larger fish you can catch with this little sucker.
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
just found a parody site on bioengineered pets -- glowingpets.com -- it's entertaining
this site has several flavors of "glowing" fish: http://www.glowingpets.com/pets/glow_fish.htm