Bangladesh glows in the world aquarium!
17 June 2013, 18:00 PM
UPDATED
17 June 2013, 21:24 PM
THERE are not too many things we can boast about in front of the international community. And yet we preferred staying in the 'dark,' while one of our neglected creatures illuminates millions of eyes, minds, and homes across the globe with its enchanting and colorful glow!
It is found in the waters of a rice field, in stagnant waters of ditches, canals or ponds, and in all geographic locations in Bangladesh. Almost all kids taking a bath in a pond has playfully 'fished' it. Pollikobi Joshimuddin immortalised it in his famous poem "nimontron." Yet we have left it neglected as a ubiquitous, useless creature!
It even does not have an approved proper Bangla name. The one I called it as a child was "Darkhina," in English zebrafish having a scientific Danio rerio name. Its natural abode is in the lower reaches of the Ganges delta, where Bangladesh is situated. So it is a Bangali fish.
Alas, very little we know scientifically of its natural wildlife and habitat.
Zebrafish has five blue stripes with gold or silver colour in between along its 30 mm-long body. As an animal, some of its physiological attributes are similar to those of humans. With a small size, a short life cycle of 4 months, and easy cultivation in controlled environments, it made itself a valuable animal model to the medical community.
It again all goes back to my mentor at Dhaka University, the late Dr. Anwarul Azim Choudhury, who showed me the colorful glows of bacteria, insects, and other creatures. At the time, I knew that the Japanese scientist Osamu Shimomura had isolated the green light producing (fluorescent) protein called GFP from a jellyfish in 1961. A fluorescent compound absorbs light at one wavelength to give it up at another higher wavelength. Since each wavelength has a characteristic colour, the invisible absorbed colour can emit a visible light.
GFP absorbs parts of the white light to emit green light.
In 1998, a Chinese scientist named Zhiyuan Gong in Singapore, introduced the GFP gene (information) into the embryo of a zebrafish that integrated the gene into its genome (chromosome) as its own. As the zebrafish grew, it kept on producing GFP that emitted green colour when exposed to normal light.
Commercially it came to be known as Glofsh. Its popularity as a pet was such that 100,000 got sold at $19 each in less than a month of its introduction. During almost forty years in between these two milestone events with GFP, scientist worldwide had cloned, sequenced, and conducted a myriad of experiments with the GFP.
Employing biotechnology, they changed the green GFP to yellow YFP, cyan CFP, and had isolated various other fluorescent proteins from other organisms. In the following years, all these fluorescent protein genes made home in the zebrafish genome. As a result, the current Glofish population shows almost five colours of the rainbow! They are thus genetically modified fishes.
Apart from serving as a piece of decoration, zebrafish and its fluorescent forms are increasingly being used in environment pollution, cancer, ophthalmology, immunology, cardiovascular, and drug discovery research.
A Bangale fish is immensely contributing to benefit humanity and science.
Today, you will seldom find a pet aquarium, domestic or commercial, without a few of these colourful creatures swimming around and bringing delight to the spectators. But alas, they cannot speak. If they did, they sure would have said "I came from Bangladesh." Bangladeshi scientists should work to give them speech.
The writer, a former Dhaka University teacher, is a biomedical scientist working in the USA.
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