Why would anyone want to make fish glow?

The glow of glowing fish comes from the jellyfish Aequorea victoria. The GFP gene from Aequorea victoria was transferred to a zebrafish, where it is expressed in the muscle cells of the zebrafish. Interestingly creating glowing fish for pets wasn't the original purpose of the experiment. Instead these glowing fish were designed to sense toxins in the environment.

Resources :

General information on the zebrafish

History of George Streisinger and zebrafish

A memoir of George Streisinger

George Streisinger's first major zebrafish publication launching the field of zebrafish research. The first step was the creation of homozygous zebrafish, which would allow the creation of zebrafish mutants for research.

A review article on transgene technology for the production of the human insulin protein. Herbert Boyer, together with the entrepreneur Robert Swanson founded Genentech that became a major in biotechnology and started producing human insulin in bacteria. The review takes a look at the history of insulin extraction and how commercial recombinant insulin production started.

(Open source) A fascinating paper by Stanley Cohen taking a retrospective look at the cloning and the impact it has had on biology. The paper outlines well the steps it took to clone DNA and refers to the significant papers. Here Cohen states that researchers suspected that there were barriers between species limiting the transfer of genes.

The original paper (1962) by Osamu Shimomura and colleagues where they first extracted the GFP protein. They were studying a different fluorescent protein at the time, aequorin, and in the paper, GFP is only briefly mentioned as a side note and didn't have a name yet. Later it was found that in the jellyfish, Aequorea victoria, aequorin releases blue light that excites the GFP protein to glow green.

Another vital paper (1979) by Osamu Shimomura and colleagues describing the structure of GFP

The famous paper describing the first transfer of the GFP gene by Douglas Prasher and colleagues

A review of transgenic marine animals

A review on the use of GFP in zebrafish by Zhiyuan Gong and Haiyan Wan.

The paper on the first glowing fish by Zhiyuan Gong and colleagues

A paper describing the making of the glowing zebrafish by expressing GFP, RFP, and YFP under the mylpfa promoter.

(Open source) General review of fluorescent proteins as biomarkers

A paper assessing the environmental impact of Glofish

Zebrafish are more vulnerable to predators

A review article looking at the different fluorescent zebrafish developed for sensing environmental toxins. According to the article most of the methods created have not been able to detect toxicants at environmentally relevant concentrations

A review article on zebrafish and toxicology. The review looks at how zebrafish can be used to study the effects of toxins and also the research their use for toxin detection.

Zhiyuan Gong's fish was also meant to become toxin sensing fish. This is communicated in the book Frankenstein's Cat by Emily Anthes, which takes a look at transgenic animals in general. According to the author, she gained this knowledge from Alan Blake, one of the founders of Yorktown. In the patent filed by Zhiyuan Gong, the primary object of the fluorescent fish was stated to either be continually glowing or to glow selectively in the presence of chemicals.
The book Frankenstein's Cat is also a source for the information on Yorktown technologies and the time when Glofish entered the market

The selling of GM fish is limited in the EU

Credits:

Images under (CC BY 2.0)

Other images

Zebrafish image under creative commons

Zebrafish development video (CC BY 4.0)

[alicea]

I never imagined how intresting glowfish could be!! Your videos are insanely well-made!

[LcdDrmr]

Fascinating subject, and superb animation. A whole staff couldn't have made any better production than this.

[DE-]

Thought this was a kurzgezagt vid. Close enough and good work

[reinq_]

YO THIS CHANNEL IS CRITICALLY UNDERRATED

[FluorescentBetta]

I worked at both VA's in Palo Alto (Stanford) as well as SF (UCSF). This was intended for human application all along. Today, we call it MVP, Million Veteran Program. That catalogs DNA and maps each specimen while monitoring the health of the patient. Ultimately this is for Genomic Therapy. Not only curing disease at a genomic level, but also having he power to regrow limbs and organs.

[beckhamdao]

I would a imagine a single glowing fish would be at a disadvantage, but imagine if it was a school of fish with synchronized movements that would just be a mind fuck for predators. Due to how light behaves in water it’ll just be like a giant glowing mass that could possibly blind or confuse other fish.

[bultothaibigbulge]

thanks i just bought them yesterday from fish market, and wonder how can they be...wow its lots of work to get that. your vdo is very helpful in giving me a clue what i have in my tank.

[SaftoRangen]

ah, it's like the quality of your videos are getting better and better!
it's quite interesting how these glofish aren't available in europe, but when i was visiting the states i stumbled across them in a walmart.
funny things, these GMO fish. kinda makes me wonder, is it possible to make a human glow like that? (asking for a friend)
anyway, keep up the good work!

[EveryCellAUniverse]

Spread the word and help the channel grow! Reddit users, here's a few subreddits the videos might be suited to r/channelwatch, r/curiousvideos, r/educativevideos, r/qualityyoutube and r/videos.


The support you guys give is priceless. Thank you!

[cipreste]

this was very interesting! but in terms of environmental monitoring, what exactly would be the advantages of using zebrafish instead of just checking with chemical indicators?

[Billy.]

I have bred these guys and now I have more than 90 of them

[krishnaks]

Nicely made video. Very informative and a visual feast at the same time. Thank you for sharing the facts about the glow fish in an interesting way

[rumblefish]

It is fascinating to imagine the creation of entirely new subspecies, their traits determined by human interest rather than environmental pressure. The next step is to make these forced traits heritable.

[yara]

this was so well made and well explained. thanks a lot!

[Cleeon]

And because of that's, now i will have green 🟢 glowing in the dark crayfish

[joyalgeorge]

Great work man.. you cleared my doubt very well.

[chriscivil]

Thanks so much dude. Super interesting and somewhat easy to understand

[preetsaini]

Excellent explanation thank you dear .you are the best.

[Shubhamsingh-rnfm]

Kip it up bro very very informative and useful thanks and love

[luckydays]

I love your voice man and really good explanation 😍keep growing god bless you 🤗🥰