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Glowing transgenic zebra danios more vulnerable to predation


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#1 Guest_butch_*

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Posted 22 November 2013 - 06:26 PM

Just found a study on transgenic zebra danios and the predation of wild predators in United States. Thought you would be interesting into reading on the study.

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#2 Guest_UncleWillie_*

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Posted 22 November 2013 - 09:57 PM

I'd rather not get into the ethics debate part of this, but I did just want to mention that I'm pretty sure IACUC does not recognize fish or invertebrates. The reason the study did not cover IACUC is because it is not required. Strange, I know, but that's what I remember. Although, some universities have policies that will still require some sort of animal use permit regardless of the type of organism.

Edited by UncleWillie, 22 November 2013 - 10:02 PM.


#3 Guest_Skipjack_*

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Posted 23 November 2013 - 02:29 PM

I cleaned this thread up from where it went wrong. If you have something to add please do so, and do it in a non-inflammatory way. Some can be sensitive to this type of thing. Some have a hard time euthanizing a fish. Some look at them as pets, while others look at them as specimens. My intent here is to allow the discussion, but let's keep it scientific, and non emotional. I removed my post as well because my methods may offend some.

We don't have to walk on egg shells here, but we should not fuel the fire either. So back to the topic at hand.

#4 Guest_Orangespotted_*

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Posted 23 November 2013 - 03:38 PM

Hmmm, almost brought this up as a thread itself but seeing how the discussion has followed it seems appropriate to add it here: http://www.ikijime.com/ . The only fish listed on the site are Australian species, but the technique itself was discovered and mastered by Japanese and Korean seafood chefs. It is similar to the "knock the head on a rock" used by some people but is more precise and aims to reduce pain, lessen stress, and preserve the flavor of fishes as best as possible. Thought it was worth a mention.

"Ethics talk aside, this does seem like one of these "we already know it but lets prove it anyway" studies."
You have a point. Why even bother with a touchy issue like this if it seems to already lie in the realm of common sense? If I remember correctly though, good science is proving every claim as thoroughly as possible, because we cannot truly "know" anything inherently, but merely have substantial evidence in support of our theories. Theoretical physics as a field in particular has great examples of things we thought were common sense but through continuous study of what we "knew" it became apparent that there were other factors which were not predicted. Yet, as we turn our sights to living things, the issues of morality necessitate changes in our procedures. We are the observers, but we wish to observe each other. And we as observers wish not to do harm to ourselves. But what of other observers? And who are the "observers" anyways? What are the decisive principles in this? This is where I think we can find that philosophy and ethics underlie all other subjects. And though it is a complicated subject fraught with debate, I think it would also be errant to disclude it from discussion, as I don't think we can truly debate something without considering the values beneath each argument. But for now, I believe it would probably be in the best interest of the forum to give it an acknowledging glance and continue in the face of other things.

Zebra danios - they aren't a listed invasive species in the U.S. yet as far as I know. I predict the transgenic varieties would also be less likely to establish themselves versus the normal fish since a fish with both pairs of a given fluorescent gene does not survive if the fluorescent parents were able to spawn despite their visibility inviting predation. How this works across other color varieties of florescence I don't know though; the crosses I heard of were the green x green, orange x orange, and red x red ones where 25% of the spawn didn't live (the glowing parents appeared to have a heterozygous normal/flourescent gene makeup). Making test crosses to experiment with crossing varieties is illegal though... the fish are trademarked and you can get in legal trouble for breeding them. Anyways, there is also a 25% proportion of fry with the traditional zebra danio coloration, which according to this study have a higher chance of survival on contrast to their bright siblings. They don't carry the fluorescent genes at all, so even though concerns about sustaining populations of the glowing variety are possibly moot, there is still a real potential danger in terms of invasive species introduction with the zebra danio itself.

#5 Guest_butch_*

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Posted 23 November 2013 - 06:58 PM

The reason why I pick this study is because I often seen this subject comes up as there are some concerns about releasing the genetically modified animals in the wild that may caused negative effects on the ecosystems. Some people thinks that a GM danio are more threatening to the ecosystems than a regular danio because simply they are genetically modified animals that can caused predators into glowing franken(insert your animal here). I do have a concern about GM trout/salmon being escaping into the native trout/salmon waters tho I find the double muscled trout unlikely to survive in the wild but we don't know for sure.

#6 Guest_Irate Mormon_*

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Posted 30 November 2013 - 12:43 AM

This thread reminds me of the movie "Piranha 3 - 3D"

Those fish had a serious attitude problem.




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