Fluorescent ball pythons...I kid you not.

[icygirl]

Some people claim they are totally against genetically modified foods... but the argument hits gray areas when you think about the number of starving people in the world, and the number of people who cannot afford "organics" and "natural" foods. Genetically modified foods are a potential answer to world hunger problems.... So how can one label them as "bad"?

By the way, has anyone considered that this "neon mice" site might be a fake? It'd be real easy to edit those pictures, and the "store finder" links are all broken...

[Morphie]

By the way, has anyone considered that this "neon mice" site might be a fake? It'd be real easy to edit those pictures, and the "store finder" links are all broken...

I don't think they are - they're the same place that's responsible for glofish, and glofish are available at petco now.

GFP mice are pretty common in science since they were first made in ...98? i think? it wouldn't surprise me at all to find them in the pet trade. I just wish they'd sell me a non-neutered male

[Morphie]

BTW i think i screwed up a while back when i said you'd add the sequence to introns to make mice glow - introns are non-coding regions and adding sequences there would have exactly no effect. I think you have to add sequences to promoter regions to get things to change, but don't quote me on that.

Lousy no edit button (i understand why it goes away, it's just frustrating sometimes when you want to use it for good as opposed to evil lol)

[Envied Reptiles]

I think those mice look ugly. I wonder how the balls do or will look. Makes me wonder how they will look not only on a normal but when mixed into the morphs. A red glow in the dark supper black pastel..........

[Mendel's Balls]

BTW i think i screwed up a while back when i said you'd add the sequence to introns to make mice glow - introns are non-coding regions and adding sequences there would have exactly no effect. I think you have to add sequences to promoter regions to get things to change, but don't quote me on that.

Lousy no edit button (i understand why it goes away, it's just frustrating sometimes when you want to use it for good as opposed to evil lol)

Exons are the protein coding regions of a gene......

Usually you add the coding regions of the transgenic gene with a strong promoter recombinantly attached.

The whole piece of DNA that then is genetic transplanted into the genome is sometimes called a genetic cassette.

[Morphie]

Exons are the protein coding regions of a gene......

Usually you add the coding regions of the transgenic gene with a strong promoter recombinantly attached.

The whole piece of DNA that then is genetic transplanted into the genome is sometimes called a genetic cassette.

LoL thank you. I'm still a noob at this stuff - last year I wouldn't have even understood what your icon is all about.

Are you handy with a microscope? we could try to clone these mice and make viable males MUAHAHAHAHHAA.

(if neonmice™ or their legal advisors are reading this post, let it be known that i'm kidding and don't have the equipment to clone these mice anyway - i'd probably have better luck making my own strain )

[Morphie]

I think those mice look ugly. I wonder how the balls do or will look. Makes me wonder how they will look not only on a normal but when mixed into the morphs. A red glow in the dark supper black pastel..........

they;re not :glow in the dark: per-say. They have a protein that is excited by a particular wavelength of UV light (it's my understanding that they can be caused to glow at narrower or broader wavelength ranges depending on what a given research project requires, but this part's irrelevant) the protein, excited by the UV wavelength, emits its own wavelength of light that your eye perceives as green - red - whatever.

You would basically have to have a special light on them all the time to make them glowy, and I'm pretty sure that this kind of constant exposure will eventually cause bleaching that will be restored only by new cellular growth - or maybe that's just the GFP drosophila larvae that I was looking at.

Anyone want GFP fruit flies? I know where to get *those* - we could cross breed them to wingless flies and produce glowing wingless flies for people's dart frog tanks!

[pillowtalk6188]

holy crapola. i never would have thought... it's just WEIRD looking. do they ust look normal colored in regular light?

whats next, a catdog? like from the cartoon. personally, i want to see one of those mice in real life. don't agree with it, but i REALLY want to see one.

i remeber there being a law banning colored chics. like people that would put food coloring in chicken eggs and customers would buy the cute little chicks but they would eventually molt the feathers and become adult chickens and alot of people would abandon them. so they were banned, because they were like "novelty" pets or something. people didn't want them after they grew up normal.

[wilomn]

On the subject of bananas, in appx. 12 or maybe 20 years, I forget which, there will be no more of the typical banana most of us see in the market.

There is a fungus that has no cure killing them off.

Bye bye nanners.

As far as genetic manipulation, no matter what any of us think there will always be someone who thinks otherwise.

Whether we like it or not, it's going to happen.

Ever wonder what's going on that we never hear about? How about in places that are good at secrets like Korea and South America. Do you suppose there may be some secret stuff happening in Europe or Africa?

Eh, probably not.

Right?

[WingedWolfPsion]

Guys...this thread is kind of disappointing me...there's a lot of questions being asked that were answered on the page I linked. I feel like the collective attention span is so low people can't even bother to read something before they comment on it...or maybe can't read it.

I'll go through a few, though.

1) Of course it's real. I called to put in an order for some Swiss-Webster mice to put in my racks, because the local mice look like crap. This is the same company that is shipping live mice through the mail. (micebymail.com). When I talked to them, they said they didn't have a lot of stock available right now, but they had enough for my order. They were low on the Swiss-Websters because they were focusing more heavily on breeding the Neon mice, and expected to start shipping them to pet stores in a week or two. He gave me the url for the site.

Fluorescent mice were created quite some time ago, of course--this is just the first release of them to the pet trade.

2) It's exactly the same process that was used to make glofish. Mice are very prolific breeders, and there are obvious financial and environmental reasons not to release fertile mice to the general public. MOSTLY financial. Anyone could start breeding them, and outcompete these guys rather quickly. Their use for science is covered in the FAQ. Their use as pets is "COOL, FLUORESCENT MICE!". What do people keep pet mice for anyhow?

3) Um...yes, they are mice. It clearly says "mice". It also clearly shows photos of mice. The captions under those photos also clearly explain that the mice will be available in furred and furless (gremlin) versions. So yes, those are hairless mice...hairless mice have been around for quite a long time now, just not hairless FLUORESCENT mice. They also show a video of a partially hairless mouse. I think it's green.

4) Where does it say they are working with ball pythons? It says that in the FAQ in the section where they talk about creating other fluorescent species. They're also working with rats, gerbils, and hamsters. And other animals, apparently, though they didn't specify. I know this specific genetic modification has already been done with rabbits and cats, though. As for neutering ball pythons, of course they aren't going to try to sterilize the ball pythons. This is the US they're operating in, not Africa. There is no risk of the animals breeding with wild populations. There's also no point in trying to sterilize them--ball pythons are sloooow breeders. They didn't neuter the glofish, either. My roomate has some glofish, and they bred in the tank, and produced baby glofish. You aren't allowed to breed and sell the glofish--it would be illegal to do so--but they aren't silly enough to say you can't breed them for your own amusement. I imagine they will put similar restrictions on glo-ball-pythons. lol

5) They aren't available yet because they have a couple weeks left before they start shipping to pet stores. A fluorescent green mouse would make one heck of an interesting xmas gift.

6) What difference does it make whether a chance mutation produced something new and bizarre, or it was deliberately introduced via an expensive process? The end result is an animal that looks different, either way. What is this 'unnatural' claim? Do you think that the genes of living things are in isolation and never cross? Biological studies have proven that bacteria and viruses can carry genes between species! You would think the way people talk that everything humans do is unnatural--that humans are unnatural. I mean, what are we, then? Artificial? Aliens? If a beaver dam is natural, then so is a glofish.

Personally, I LOVE genetic engineering. It's great fun. The neon mice certainly aren't suffering--they're going to live out their priveleged $40 lives being pampered by proud human owners. The glofish aren't suffering--they certainly are given more care in an aquarium than their ordinary zebra fish brethen. The same will be true of other genetically modified pets. This is opening a door, to be sure...what lies on the other side of it...that's going to be VERY interesting indeed.

Real genetic engineering of our pets can do more in the long run than create fluorescent pets. It could rid dog breeds of problems like hip displaysia, increase their lifespan, and alter their form, even their personality, to suit the breed's purpose even better. It's a shortcut. Sure, it makes all that hard work we did before seem more of a waste, but computers make accounting by hand look like a waste too--we don't miss that, at least not anymore.

I think people afraid of the ethics of genetic engineering have no sense of humor. They just don't want to see green children. I do. I also want to see cabbits, and tiny little winged elephants and flies with the heads of people, darnit. Mostly because, even though such a thing would just be a fly, it would completely freak out people who really need to be freaked out. ^_^

We've done enough damage to the world's ecosystems just being us, and modifying things the hard way. At least genetic engineering offers the potential to fix a FEW of those mistakes. It could create more, sure, but it's hardly going to do worse than we've already managed to do.

Besides, if you offered your kids a tray of genetically engineered pink fluorescent broccoli, I bet you'd have a MUCH easier time getting them to eat it.