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.

Comments

Novelty Item

[KD5YPT]

You know, this has gone too far. Genetic engineering just for the heck of it? What purpose do a glowing fish have?

Re:Novelty Item

[Morgahastu]

The lessons learned in engineering a new breed of fish can be used in the future to say, engineer cancer fighting genes.

This is just a side effect of a useful experiment, why not make some money from it and raise awareness for genetic engineering?

The first?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect the first genetically engineered pets were dogs or possibly cats.

Wrong.

[Chess_the_cat]

The trademarked GloFish...is first genetically engineered pet[sic]

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.

Re:Wrong.

[Albanach]

they went about selecting different existing species and breeding them to create their perfect dog.

Really? That'd be a neat trick. If you are successful in breeding different species you get infertile offspring - that's what species are, different groups that don't crossbreed to produce fertile offspring. Like crossing a donkey and a horse to make a (normally infertile) mule.

Now taking two different breeds of dogs (which are both from the same species) and crossbreeding is a type of artificial selection, but that's nothing at all like taking parts of two different species and combining them into a new one.

What I find most apalling...

[physicsboy500]

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.

Not wrong

[KalvinB]

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

The mindless anti-GM zelots really piss me off

[wowbagger]

The mindless anti-GM zelots who protest every GM creature without good reason really piss me off. No matter the organism, no matter the modification, they are against it - not because they have a real REASON or anything, but because "It's GM, it must be bad!"

I am not saying "all GM is good, let's go" - quite the contrary:

• I am against BT-enhanced corn - not because it may kill butterflies, but because it guarantees that a perfectly good insecticide will be rendered USELESS in a few years. Rather than making a BT based spray, and using it ONLY in cases of severe infestation, and then making sure you KILL ALL THE BUGS, it will now be used everywhere, no matter what, but at a level that will allow the naturally resistant bugs to live, breed, and dominate!
• I am against the various Monsanto "self-destructing" breeds of wheat, because that just is one more way in which farming is converted from a relatively self-sufficient and sustainable activity into an activity dependant upon the corporations to survive. Instead of farmers being able to get next year's seed from this year's harvest, they have to go back to Monsanto every year. Improve wheat all you want, guys, but the same arguments RMS makes about software apply to crops - cost to create high, cost to replicate LOW, so GPL them (or at least Aladdin license them!) In twenty years when Monsanto's patents on those strains expire, will you see Monsanto create a strain without the self-destruct gene, or will Monsanto just let the parent stocks die?
• Worry about introducing a new lifeform into a biosphere forigen to it - but the cain toad has done more damage than this fish ever will, and the cain toad wasn't gene-tweaked! Being gene-tweaked is not sufficent nor necessary cause to be damaging to an ecosystem!

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"!

Re:The mindless anti-GM zelots really piss me off

[moof1138]

"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!"

I think you attribute far too much power to the 'anti-GMers'. Here in the US the 'mindless anti-GMers' (all twelve of them) have essentially been powerless to do anything. At this point in time in the US corporate interests trump any others, and Monsanto has been given a free pass to do whatever they please, no matter what the consequences. Consider that in the US it is *illegal* to state that your products do not contain GM products. The anti-GMers have some sway in Europe and elsewhere, but even there you will find that often they are not the mindless straw men you have drawn at all, but have very good reasons for criticism, such as those you yourself have enumerated. Anti-GM usually means anti-Monsanto, and frankly Monsanto can behave completely horribly. Their filing of hundreds of frivolous suits against farmers who refuse to use their products, their propaganda/disinfomation campaigns like the 'golde rice' BS, and many other abuses come to mind. If we ever reach the day where GM is not propagated by corporate predators with a big portfolio of patented life forms, and a bigger army of lawyers, I expect the tone from the anti-GM people might change, but we are not in that world now.

As seen on SouthPark

[LibrePensador]

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.