• Question: how do you make fish glow. (so intrested)

    Asked by simone2001 to Lilly, Alan, Deepak, Francesca, Nick on 7 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by will13, chantellefard, tobinn, binukrishnanm, faberry, lovetodance333, ebonymay, daviesl, .
    • Photo: Lilian Hunt

      Lilian Hunt answered on 7 Mar 2014:

      Ok, I’ll try and break this down into a few steps…

      1. I can clone a bit of DNA i’m interested from the fish and add it to a bit of DNA from a jellyfish called GFP – Green Fluorescent Protein. The GFP gene makes the protein that glows green under fluorescent light.

      2. I can inject these bits of DNA into a fish embryo, one that is just the fertilised egg cell. This means it’s just the one cell big after the sperm has fertilised the egg but not yet grown at all.

      3. The fish will then grow to an almost fully formed fish after 72 hours and in this time, if the bit of DNA I used in step 1 is especially important anywhere it will make the green glowing protein. I can look at the fish under the fluorescent microscope and see these green glowing bits. So for example if the DNA I clone is important to make the eye grow, my little fish will have a green glowing eye! Pretty cool?!

    • Photo: Alan Fitzsimmons

      Alan Fitzsimmons answered on 10 Mar 2014:

      I’m glad Lilian answered this, as I don’t know how to do this!

      Different scientists become experts in different areas of science. As I’m an astronomer, I don’t know how to do what Lilian does.

      But I think it’s pretty cool too 🙂

    • Photo: Nick Wright

      Nick Wright answered on 12 Mar 2014:

      I didn’t know that you could make fish glow, this is awesome!

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