Name : M Fauzan R

Class : QE
SIN

: 155100501111005

GloFish

he GloFish, a fluorescent red

Singapore,

zebrafish sold as a novel pet,

international marketing were purchased by

has

become

the

exclusive

first

rights

for

Yorktown

transgenic animal sold to

U.S. consumers. Its sale has produced

regulatory controversies, a lawsuit, and
profits

for

its

proponent,

Technologies

Yorktown

Technologies (Austin, TX). With the

approximately

a year-

market plan calling for sales in a widening

number

of

countries,

and-a-half

continuing

controversy seems likely.

ago.
produces

GloFish

Yorktown
through

The GloFish is a trademarked transgenic

contracts with 5-D Tropical (Plant City,

zebrafish (Danio rerio) expressing a red

FL) and Segrest Farms (Gibsonton, FL),

fluorescent protein from a sea anemone

and began marketing them in the United

under the transcriptional control of the

States in December.

promoter from the myosin light peptide 2

gene of zebrafish1. Produced and patented
by a group at the National University of

Early development
The original zebrafish (or zebra danio, Danio rerio) is a native of rivers in India and
Bangladesh. It measures three centimeters long and has gold and dark blue stripes.
In 1999, Dr. Zhiyuan Gong and his colleagues at the National University of Singapore were
working with a gene that encodes the green fluorescent protein (GFP), originally extracted
from a jellyfish, that naturally produced bright green fluorescence. They inserted the gene into
a zebrafish embryo, allowing it to integrate into the zebrafish's genome, which caused the fish
to be brightly fluorescent under both natural white light and ultraviolet light. Their goal was
to develop a fish that could detect pollution by selectively fluorescing in the presence of
environmental toxins. The development of the constantly fluorescing fish was the first step in
this process, and the National University of Singapore filed a patent application on this work.
[3] Shortly thereafter, his team developed a line of red fluorescent zebra fish by adding a gene
from a sea coral, and orange-yellow fluorescent zebra fish, by adding a variant of the jellyfish
gene. Later, a team of researchers at the National Taiwan University, headed by Professor
Huai-Jen Tsai (), succeeded in creating a medaka (rice fish) with a fluorescent green
color, which like the zebrafish is a model organism used in biology.
The scientists from NUS and businessmen Alan Blake and Richard Crockett from Yorktown
Technologies, L.P., a company in Austin, Texas, met and a deal was signed whereby Yorktown
obtained the worldwide rights to market the fluorescent zebrafish, which Yorktown
subsequently branded as "GloFish". At around the same time, a separate deal was made
between Taikong, the largest aquarium fish producer in Taiwan, and the Taiwanese
researchers to market the green medaka in Taiwan under the name TK-1. In the spring of
2003, Taiwan became the first to authorize sales of a genetically modified organism as a pet.
One hundred thousand fish were reportedly sold in less than a month at US$18.60 each. The
fluorescent medaka are not GloFish, as they are not marketed by Yorktown Technologies, but
instead by Taikong Corp under a different brand name.

Sources of colors
Examples of sources of fluorescent protein genes include GFP (Aequorea victoria, jellyfish),
GFP (Renilla reniformis, sea pansy), dsRed (Discosoma, mushroom coral), eqFP611
(Entacmaea quadricolor, sea anemone), RTMS5 (Montipora efflorescens, stony coral), dronpa

(Pectiniidae, chalice coral), KFP (Anemonia sulcata, Venus hair anemone), eosFP
(Lobophyllia hemprichii, open brain coral), and dendra (Dendronephthya, octocoral).

This is how GloFish are made