Fluorescent ball pythons...I kid you not.

[starmom]

I have an issue with genetically modifying just about anything: food, snakes, fish, rodents, people....

[wilomn]

I'd be willing to bet that 8 out of 10 members here, maybe slightly less as some of you are actually health conscious, have eaten genetically modified friut, vegetable and quite possibly meat.

Talk to your produce manager, not the guy putting it out, the guy in charge and your butcher.

You may be surprised.

[JimiSnakes]

I'd be willing to bet that 8 out of 10 members here, maybe slightly less as some of you are actually health conscious, have eaten genetically modified friut, vegetable and quite possibly meat.

Talk to your produce manager, not the guy putting it out, the guy in charge and your butcher.

You may be surprised.

So that's what happened to me?!



I knew this wasn't normal....

[gcanibe]

Looks like HULK jaja

[Morphie]

I find it stupid to even mess with nature like that.Whats the point in modifing anything every creature has all the beauty it needs alone.

guess you'll never be breeding for morphs?

[Morphie]

100% of the people here have eaten genetically modified food, and at least most of you enjoy genetically manipulated animals.

[blackcrystal22]

So that's what happened to me?!



I knew this wasn't normal....

Ah, wait, what?
I'm confused.

guess you'll never be breeding for morphs?

This is incorrect. Where did the first morphs come from? They were naturally found in the wild. They are a NATURAL genetic mutation. Not a Genetically Implanted or Modified being. There is a big difference between breeding to produce certain genetics and implanting genetics directly into the animal.

[starmom]

I'd be willing to bet that 8 out of 10 members here, maybe slightly less as some of you are actually health conscious, have eaten genetically modified friut, vegetable and quite possibly meat.

Talk to your produce manager, not the guy putting it out, the guy in charge and your butcher.

You may be surprised.

That might be a correct figure.
I'm the one left out given where I get my food and the people I know who grow it... I don't shop at 'regular' stores

[Morphie]

I completely agree, I am not entirely sure about how I feel about this either and to be honest I see no real point in it. What is the benefit of making a mouse flourescent?

epifluorescense is useful in visualizing live specimens' functioning parts. You can add the protein coding sequence to introns that code for blood cells, bone cells, skin cells, fat cells - whatever and that's where you'll find the GFP (Green Fluorescent Protein) once the animal in question fully develops. Some of the "neon mice" on that page have what look like glowing skeletons - that's because the GFP sequence was put into a bone coding region and it's the bones that are glowing as a result.

Doing this allows function of live cells to be viewed and teaches us more about the animal in question and ourselves as, for example, muscle cells in mice are in a lot of ways similar to muscle cells in humans.

[Morphie]

This is incorrect. Where did the first morphs come from? They were naturally found in the wild. They are a NATURAL genetic mutation. Not a Genetically Implanted or Modified being. There is a big difference between breeding to produce certain genetics and implanting genetics directly into the animal.

Can you tell me what i said that was "incorrect"?

Morphs are a result of genetic flaws resulting in mutants. Mutants of species are either more or less successful than "wild types" of those species. All individual animals have mutations - most are hidden and carried. Some are expressed - and most of those are detrimental. The ones who have produced and expressed successful mutations are the founders of the species you see today.

GFP is a protein found in jelly fish. Somewhere, eons ago, a mutation caused a jelly fish (then a morph) to glow under a certain wavelength of light, which did benefit this animal somehow and allowed it and its offspring to out-compete non-glowing members of the species.

All that you do when you make a GFP mouse is take a mutation designed by another life form that found it beneficial in its natural environment and add it to the genome of a mouse - an artificial morph, but a morph none-the-less, and just as likely in nature as a glowing jelly-fish. It's possible that a mouse has naturally mutated to make GFP in the past, but not being likely to benefit from that mutation, did not replace the main population of mice with glowing ones.

With morph snakes you are still creating artificial morphs in that you are pre-determining pairings that would likely not happen in the wild and creating a disproportionate quantity of the number of "morphed" animals for aesthetic purpose - animals that would not be at an evolutionary advantage in their natural habitats, just like these mice.

Just because you're using the animal's natural mating and birthing processes to fulfill your intent doesn't make what you're doing any better. I'm using the animal's natural cellular development and transcription processes to make it a GFP mouse. Any time you exert control over other life forms by taking advantage of their design, you're doing the same EXACT thing that a biologist in a lab is doing.

Don't think for a second that there's a high road here.