Yorktown Technologies - Genetically modified fish

This company is based in the USA run by an englishman called Alan Blake the GM fish are sold legally in the US under the brand name "Glofish" and glofish they are, the colours border on garish, click on the pics on the LHS in the link, atm the only fish they sell are modified are Zebra danios but no doubt further additions are in the pipeline.

It is illegal to sell these fish in Europe although the company have lobbied the European parliment to allow this to happen, there have been reports of these fish being on sale in the UK in the last couple of months until a crackdown by the Dept of enviroment (DEFRA?) in the last few weeks, wholesalers were selling these fish into the trade.

Calling these fish genetically modified is actually incorrect a more correct term would be to call them transgenic, they have genes inserted into their DNA which comes from a different marine species and this obviously is where the heart of the problem lies should they be released into the wild.

Some of you have probably read about this already just thought I would post it here anyway, personally I think they look horrible and should be avoided the same way most of us here would condone the selling of dyed fish these are potientially a lot more harmful IMO.

www.glofish.com/

Hi Zig,
I agree that they look quite garish. Not my taste either. These fish were originally developped for water control purposes. The theory was that they would stop glowing once the water quality was decreasing. They haven't quite mastered the switching off of the glow effect yet.

However, these transgenic fish are not dangerous. The gene responsible for the glow effect has to be implanted into an egg under clinical conditions. No fish suffers. they don't behave any different from normal danios. They are also no danger to native population since their colour just cries 'eat me' to any predator.

Ugly the might be, dangerous they ain't

a bit more info from my side as i deal with these things at work...
all genetically modified organisms are subject to the containment guidelines set out by the EPA. I would classify them as a class 2 risk (scale from 1-4) as they can reproduce and potentially spread in the wild. given the climate region of IRE they may also be categorized as class 1 only. the transgene spliced into the danio DNA is a modified green fluorescent protein (GFP) under a viral expression promotor. GFP originally is from a jellyfish (aeqorea victoria) and many color variants have been cloned by today. the red fluorescent one is from a coral.
GFP and its variants are considered to be relatively non toxic (except for photodamage caused by intense excitation - which can be severe) to the host organism. no good data exists on the potential danger to predators. I consider toxicity issues to be low as GFP is relatively non-reactive in itself. But you never know what problems might arise from transgenes... there are a few cases where transgenics had strong impacts on foodchains by indirect effects that were not considered. also, if its save in one organism it doesn't automatically mean that it is safe in every other organism as well. the results are depending on biological networks too complicated to simulate/predict currently.

nice overview at wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_fluorescent_protein

And people on this forum think that I'm going off my head every once in a while on the science stuff....

I wouldn't consider it no thread to any native Irish species. Even if some aquarist released some of these fish into the wild, they would not multiply here, actually probably wouldn't survive for very long due to water temperatures. Even if GFP should prove toxic to a predator, the numbers released into the wild would be way too small to make even the slightest dent into any predator population.
And you could actually simulate the effect of transgenic danios on the environment. Since they don't survive in Ireland they would not out compete any native species. The only effect on the Irish environment they potentially could have is that they could be eaten by predators when already dead. And that is very easy to stimulate. Feed the animals that could possible feed on them, such as trout, pike, perch, etc. on them for a bit and see if it has any effect on them. I strongly doubt it.
My personal opinion is that the the genetically modified boogey man is brought out again.

Very interesting S180de.

Just because they will have little chance of survival here Holger does not mean they could not have an impact somewhere else on the planet.

Personally I think the less of a market for these type of fish the better, it only encourages other companies to create transgenic species fish for profit no other reason, no benefit to science or mankind really selling these fish into a market where the primary benefactors are hobbyists, the negative effects could easily outweigh the benefit in these cases IMO.

I read about these on another forum, someone from the UK said they were for sale in their local lfs some weeks ago, totally irresponsible by the wholesalers IMO to import these fish in the first place knowing quite blatantly that they were probably illegal to sell in the first place. Think they were mentioned in PFK as well but i dont buy the magazine so not sure what was said there.

Zig,
you can get them in Ireland too. I have seen them in one of my local garden centres.
As far as impact is concerned I very much doubt that they will have an impact for several reasons:
-They are not really suited for survival in the wild. Their glowing colour basically screams 'eat me'´. Any angler will tell you that a flourescent tag on a fly or lure can make all the diffrence.
-Granted that zebra danios have the capacity to multiply rapidly but only under very limited ecological parameters. And since they are fairly low down the food chain most of the young will never make adulthood, especially when they glow in the dark. Their potential survival rate is as close as you can get to zero.

It was in PFK and I posted a link regarding this before. There is a strong anti GM lobby in Europe which I believe is trying to stir panic for whatever reason. Without GM we would have an awful lot less medicines. No expert in the field but Sushi wrote an excellent post regarding this issue.

It is a lot of hypocrisy to condone the sale of these fish but think that it is OK to buy neon morphs such as the 'diamond neon' which potentially could actually survive in the wild. Just because these fish are not transgenic doesn't mean that they do not pose a threat to wild populations.

GM in many ways does only speed up selective breeding which has been done for thousands of years and nobody seem to object to this. I'd rather see these transgenic fish sold than some of the selectively bred fish like parrot fish, flowerhorns, some of the fancy goldfish varieties, etc. on the markets today. These transgenic danios do not suffer from the implanted gene and they behave just like any other danio and do not suffer from the various ailments like spinal deformities etc, that above selectively bred fish very offten are afflicted with.

Just found the previous link re. transgenic danios:
www.irishfishkeepers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1210

oops didn't realise it had been covered before, well yis are all wrong, so there

I love your way of having a discussion governed by reason

oops didn't realise it had been covered before, well yis are all wrong, so there

He does make a compelling arguement.

...and he's loading the shotgun as we speak

even though I personally don't think they'll pose a big risk, who tells us that the color cannot act as a deterrent to a predator and thus as a survival advantage? fact is that a functional gene from a different species is introduced into a new host organism. that's transgenics and something that doesn't happen in multicellular organisms in nature. there's a good reason that transgenic GMOs (e.g. crops) are biologically engineered to be sterile to prevent the spreading in the wild as much as possible.
from my perspective as a researcher that uses and produces transgenic organisms can only say that transgenics with reproductive capacities should not be spread into the wild - irrespective of them currently being considered dangerous and harmless by us. how long will it take that these fish will be bred cost efficiently, uncontrolled and outside somewhere in asia? and what's next? there are literally hundreds of different transgenic danio variants out there in the research environment.
by the way, the desired mutations (e.g. GFP expression or any other gene) is usually coupled to a selection marker such as e.g. an antibiotic resistance that is genetically introduced into the target species as well. Its danger to the environment has to be considered as well. Even if the glow-danios might die out in the wild the resistance gene can be spread into the wild population by interbreeding.
transgenic techniques and GFP indeed have advanced biomedical research and pharmaceutical engineering tremendously. but this is where it should stay: under controlled conditions.

genetic modification by breeding is a different pair of shoes as you do not cross species barriers but use "naturally occuring" mutations of the normal genome. often mutation rates are increased in crop science/breeding by exposure to mutagenic agents and ionizing radiation (usually gamma rays emitted from radioactive isotopes). but i fully share holger's opinion on cripple breeding (which in developmental research by the way is often done using transgenic approaches for directed gene knock outs) - be it fish, dogs or whatever else...

by the way, i don't think the danios glow in the dark. no excitation light (UV or visible) --> no fluorescence. the original jellyfish however do really glow in the dark as their metabolism and proteome allows for ATP-driven bioluminescence of GFP. nice example by the way: basically the same gene in two different species and you get a different phenotype.

Some fair enough points from a genticist's point of view and all very valid they are.

Here comes the freshwater ecologists argument:

Red and shades thereof are the greatest attractor colour to any predator. Look at red killifish as an example. Their habitats are generally little puddels with very view or no predators in them. Now have a look at them from above and you will see that their back are a brownish colour and thus provides them with camouflage from predators from above such as birds.
Perch have red fins that are supposed to warn predators as suggested in old text books. Nobody told the pike and what they actually use it for is to warn off other perch especially in the breeding season. The same goes for roach.
As I mentioned before, anglers incorporate red or orange in many of their flies and lures for just the reason that these colours attract predators.

By the way these transgenic danios are already mass produced in Asia and available from many exporters.

I don't want to get into the effectiveness of the EPA or the Dept. of Aggriculture in this country but just to mention that I have seen fish and freshwater lobster being brought into Ireland with the Dept. of Agriculture cleareance docket attached that shouldn't have been allowed in...
I have no doubt that if anybody applied for the import licence for these fish they would get it. just a question of how much it would cost.

Holger is right.
I seen these Danios for sale last year in a local petshop. They are more pinkish than red. I think Orange and Black are the danger colours.

Red and shades thereof are the greatest attractor colour to any predator.

...dumping my red trunks... :o

a little off topic:
I once was told by a pet shop owner that every now and then he would receive some fish he never wanted with an incoming order . kind of like a fish sample to win re-sellers attention for unusual, less popular species, or indeed dyed fish. as far as I understood the latter often get cryptic names so that it wouldn't be obvious that the fish has been dyed. ... is there any truth to it or is it a simple excuse?

What fish wholesalers often do ist to substitute species. Say you ordered species A and the wholesaler was out of them. To justify the shipping costs they will give you another species instead. These can be dyed fish. When I was working for an aquatic dealer we more often than not got albino oscars. It's completely in the hands of the exporter and you as a LFS have no choice. Pain in the backside. Try shifting 50 ugly oscar that most people wouldn't have the tank to keep in the first place