An Academia Sinica researcher and his team inadvertently created the luminescent conjoined fish while studying the effects of muscular dystrophy In a world first, scientists at the Academia Sinica inadvertently developed a genetically engineered two-headed fluorescent zebrafish with two hearts. Researchers conducting the research project said that the existence of such a creature had never been documented anywhere else on Earth. Huang Chang-jen, an associate research fellow at the Academia Sinica's Institute of Biological Chemistry, last week put a certain gene into 200 zebrafish embryos at one-cell stage through a microinjection procedure. One of them unexpectedly developed 24 hours later into the two-headed fish, which has two hearts. As of yesterday, the weird, green fluorescent fish has been alive for eight days. Its has grown to 3mm from its original 2mm. "You can say they are actually a big zebrafish and a small one sharing a body," Huang told the Taipei Times. After checking related academic papers, Huang said that he found no documentation that such a creature had ever existed before.

Huang has used fluorescent zebrafish as a model organism for the study of functional genomics for years. To study the development of muscular dystrophy, Huang injected a gene causing the death of muscle cells into more than 200 zebrafish embryos. The research results would be used to develop drugs to cure the disease.


View: Full Article | Source: Taipei Times