Abstract
Although the transgenic technology has been successfully used to generate fluorescent zebrafish and medaka for ornamental purposes, the practicability of the technology has not been demonstrated in other ornamental fish species. In the present study, we have tested the transgenic technology in a bona fide ornamental fish species, the white skirt tetra (Gymnocorymbus ternetzi). First, its embryonic development was briefly described. Second, we successfully introduced an rfp (red fluorescent protein) gene construct driven by a strong muscle-specific mylz2 promoter from the zebrafish into the white skirt tetra and demonstrated muscle-specific expression of the RFP reporter protein. Importantly, the vivid red fluorescent color was prominently visible in adult transgenic founders under the normal daylight, like the currently marketed red fluorescent transgenic zebrafish. Thus, our current study demonstrated the feasibility of using the well-characterized zebrafish mylz2 promoters to produce useful fluorescent ornamental fish in other fish species by the transgenic technology.
References
Aleström P, Holter JL, Nourizadeh-Lillabadi R (2006) Zebrafish in functional genomics and aquatic biomedicine. Trends Biotechnol 24:15–21
Bevis BJ, Glick BS (2002) Rapidly maturing variants of the Discosoma red fluorescent protein (DsRed). Nat Biotechnol 20:83–87
Chou CY, Horng LS, Tsai HJ (2001) Uniform GFP-expression in transgenic medaka (Oryzias latipes) at the F0 generation. Transgenic Res 10:303–315
Devlin RH, Sundström LF, Muir WM (2006) Interface of biotechnology and ecology for environmental risk assessments of transgenic fish. Trends Biotechnol 24:88–97
Ekker SC, Stemple DL, Clark M, Chien C-B, Rasooly RS, Javois LC (2007) Zebrafish genome project: Bringing new biology to the vertebrate genome field. Zebrafish 4:239–251
Gong Z, Wan H, Tay TL, Wang H, Chen M, Yan T (2003) Development of transgenic fish for ornamental and bioreactor by strong expression of fluorescent proteins in the skeletal muscle. Biochem Biophys Res Comm 308:58–63
Gong Z, Wu YL, Mudumana SP, Lin S (2004) Transgenic fish for developmental biology studies. In: Gong Z, Korzh V (eds) Zebrafish development and genetics: the zebrafish and medaka models. World Scientific, Singapore, pp 476–516
Ju B, Chong SW, He J, Wang X, Xu Y, Wan H, Tong Y, Yan T, Korzh V, Gong Z (2003) Recapitulation of fast skeletal muscle development in zebrafish by transgenic expression of GFP under the mylz2 promoter. Dev Dyn 227:14–26
Kawakami K (2007) Tol2: a versatile gene transfer vector in vertebrates. Genome Biol 8(Suppl 1):S7
Kimmel CB, Ballard WW, Kimmel SR, Ullmann B, Schilling TF (1995) Stages of embryonic development of the zebrafish. Dev Dyn 203:253–310
Maclean N, Laight RJ (2000) Transgenic fish: an evaluation of the risks and benefits. Fish Fish 1:146–172
Nam YK, Maclean N, Fu C, Pandian TJ, Eguia MRR (2007) Development of transgenic fish: scientific background. In: Kapuscinski AR, Hayes KR, Li S, Dana G (eds) Environmental risk assessment f genetically modified organisms, vol 3. Methodologies for transgenic fish. CABI, UK, pp 61–94
Niemann H, Kues WA (2007) Transgenic farm animals: an update. Reprod Fertil Dev 19:762–770
Saitoh K, Miya M, Inoue JG, Ishiguro NB, Nishida M (2003) Mitochondrial genomics of ostariophysan fishes: perspectives on phylogeny and biogeography. J Mol Evol 56:464–472
Stern HM, Zon LI (2003) Cancer genetics and drug discovery in the zebrafish. Nat Rev Cancer 3:533–539
Stewart CN Jr (2006) Go with the glow: fluorescent proteins to light transgenic organisms. Trends Biotechnol 24:155–162
Sundström LF, Lõhmus M, Tymchuk WE, Devlin RH (2007) Gene-environment interactions influence ecological consequences of transgenic animals. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 104:3889–3894
Udvadia AJ, Linney E (2003) Windows into development: historic, current, and future perspectives on transgenic zebrafish. Dev Biol 256:1–17
Westerfield M, Wegner J, Jegalian BG, DeRobertis EM, Püschel AW (1992) Specific activation of mammalian Hox promoters in mosaic transgenic zebrafish. Genes Dev 6:591–598
Zeng Z, Liu X, Seebah S, Gong Z (2005) Faithful expression of living color reporter genes in transgenic medaka under two tissue-specific zebrafish promoters. Dev Dyn 234:387–392
Acknowledgments
Our research was supported by National University of Singapore and Environment Environmental Water Industrial Council of Singapore.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Pan, X., Zhan, H. & Gong, Z. Ornamental Expression of Red Fluorescent Protein in Transgenic Founders of White Skirt Tetra (Gymnocorymbus ternetzi). Mar Biotechnol 10, 497–501 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10126-008-9094-9
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10126-008-9094-9