

It took 3 years but Dr. Gong Zhiyuan, from the Department of Biological Sciences, and his team created a zebra fish that radiate a greenish glow under special light. Also they produced a fish that changes color when swimming through different temperature water. This fish became know as a Transgenic fish.
Briefly, the process involves injecting a green fluorescent protein that is isolated from jelly fish, onto the embryo of the Zebra fish which is cheap and easy to breed. This is known as micro-injection, using a very fine needle. In order for this to tbe successful, a suitable " fish gene promoter" must be identified. There are three kinds of promoters - one is skin specific, which means that the green fluorescent gene injected into the embryo will only affect the skin of the fish when the embryo develops. The second type is muscle-specific and the third type will enable a uniform colour in the entire fish. The research on treansgenic fish however, is not only for commercial purpose. It can also enable us to further understand the function ot the genepromoters. Because green colour is a convenient cellular marker, the green fluorescent treansgenic fish will facilitate cell lineage and cell migration studies in embryology. It is also a good marker for cell transplantation and nuclear transplantation experiments such a s fish cloning. Transgenic fish can also be engineered to detect environmental pollution, for example.
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