1. shiftingbaselines
  2. Test Tube Trout

Test Tube Trout

By jjacquet on September 17, 2007.

Remember the good old days when salmon would court one another in the eddies of rivers? After a long song and dance, the females would flap their tales and dig their nests by moving the gravel (some as big as oranges) before releasing thousands of pea-sized orange eggs for the chosen male to fertilize them. Voila! Baby fish.

But more and more salmonids face extinction. Often, we preserve the genetic material from endangered species by freezing it. But salmon eggs are to big and fatty to freeze. So researchers have figured out a way to produce sperm and eggs of rainbow trout within a more common species of salmon. It has a feeling of Mad Scientist to me, but the article is published in this week's Science and a 'lite' version is in the New York Times.

i-cddae67a8cc5dc2ec475c0868d6d6084-IMG_0277.JPG

Tags
new research

More like this

Trout with salmon parents could help to revive endangered fish species
This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. Getting excited when fish produce sperm would usually get you strange looks. But for Tomoyuki Okutsu and colleagues at the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, it's all part of a day's work.…
Salmon + Salmon = Trout?
tags: researchblogging.org, salmon, trout, spawning, molecular biology, cloning, conservation, endangered species A trout germ cell is transplanted into the body cavity of a newly hatched salmon embryo. This is part of the process that allowed adult salmon to successfully spawn trout offspring.…
Salmon give birth to trout, suspect paternity
Why must scientists play with salmons' heads like this: Researchers have succeeded in making salmon couples give birth to trout -- using a technique that they argue could help to preserve rare species of fish. Goro Yoshizaki and his colleagues at the Tokyo University of Marine Science and…
Captive Breeding Negatively Impacts Reproductive Success in the Wild
tags: researchblogging.org, conservation, captive breeding, endangered species, reproductive success I bred parrots and other birds for zoos and for the pet trade for years before I moved to NYC. I often thought about applying my avicultural and ornithological skills and talents to propagate birds…

good old days when salmon would court one another in the eddies of rivers? After a long song and dance, the females would flap their tales and dig their nests by moving the gravel (some as big as oranges) before releasing thousands of pea-sized orange eggs for the chosen male to fertilize them.