FISH THAT GLOW?







Modified Rice Fish


Prof. Tsai was using a fluorescent protein extracted from jellyfish as a genetic marker, attaching it to DNA in embryonic fish to make specific genes easier to see under a microscope. Laboratories elsewhere have produced partially fluorescent pigs, mice and insects.

Prof. Tsai also creates fish with fluorescent hearts, which researchers at the University of California at San Francisco use to monitor development of the fish organ -- useful for understanding human heart development, since humans and fish share a significant portion of their DNA. But two years ago, Prof. Tsai hatched a surprise: fish that showed the fluorescent color brightly in every cell.













Enneapterygius pusillus
has found a creative way to communicate with other fish in a world dominated by blues and greens: The fish literally glows red. Because the color red has a longer wavelength and fish are better attuned to seeing colors with shorter wavelengths (such as green and blue), scientists had thought red was irrelevant to fish.

"Marine fish are generally assumed not to see or use red light, with the exception of some deep-sea fish," lead researcher Nico Michiels of the University of Tuebingen in Germany






The angry-looking deep sea anglerfish has a right to be cranky. It is quite possibly the ugliest animal on the planet, and it lives in what is easily Earth's most inhospitable habitat: the lonely, lightless bottom of the sea.

There are more than 200 species of anglerfish, most of which live in the murky depths of the Atlantic and Antarctic oceans, up to a mile below the surface, although some live in shallow, tropical environments. Generally dark gray to dark brown in color, they have huge heads and enormous crescent-shaped mouths filled with sharp, translucent teeth. Some angler fish can be quite large, reaching 3.3 feet (1 meter) in length. Most however are significantly smaller, often less than a foot.

Their most distinctive feature, worn only by females, is a piece of dorsal spine that protrudes above their mouths like a fishing pole—hence their name. Tipped with a lure of luminous flesh this built-in rod baits prey close enough to be snatched. Their mouths are so big and their bodies so pliable, they can actually swallow prey up to twice their own size.