Half n' half axoltls

[TJ]

These were engineered by slicing the eggs of albino and "wild" variety axolotls and then splicing them together.

Source: Science for Life, Tokyo University Digital Museum
http://www.um.u-tokyo.ac.jp/dm2k-umdb/publish_db/books/sl/chapter1/08.html

 

[kaysie]

I think they'd look better the other way around. they look like they're suffering from vitiligo (for those not medically inclined: this disease destroys melanin in skin cells, making large patches of white skin (which Michael Jackson claims to have, but i highly doubt it))

 

[sara]

Actually I think they are fascinating although the method for creating them ...

I don't read Japanese, what are the details?

 

[cataldo]

I feel like those axols just joined a gang and are heading out into the night to do bad things. You can splice them together? Yikes.

On the funny side: How about we take a salamandra egg and a Cryptobranchus egg and make a COLORFUL LOOKING Hellbender?

Well, My mind has fallen apart now.

 

[kaysie]

when the egg is still in egg form and is just starting to split, you can cleave off certain cells (which will develop into certain parts) and then fuse them to another egg who's had those cells removed, and voila, a spliced axie. Cataldo, splicing wouldnt work between Salamandra and Cryptobranchus due to the fact that they're TOO different. but i imagine you COULD take the genes of salamandra that cause the colorfulness and insert them into cryptobranchus and hope they're taken into the cell and then expressed.

 

[charlie]

Oooo i like those a lot!

 

[richard]

I like those too. What about making them, do people have any opinions on if it might be wrong? Do these animals live normally?

 

[michael]

Their is a section about this in "Developmental Biology of the Axolotl" by Armstrong and Malacinski. They call them chimera. The embryo fusion doesn't look like it would be real difficult. You cut two embryos in half at the neurula stage and hold them together with two stainless steel plates. Each plate has half an oblong hole in it. The two halves of the embryo fuse in 3 to 4 hours and the plates are removed. The axolotl develops normally. Their are practical research reasons for doing this. The one that intrigued me was splicing a heart lethal embryo with a normal embryo. The heart lethal would die at a certain stage or age. By splicing the back half of the lethal embryo to the front half of a normal axolotl you now have an axolotl that carries the lethal gene but can survive.
They look pretty cool and "making" some chimera has crossed my mind. I don't think it would be unethical. They would grow and develop like a normal axolotl except for the color. They would breed just like whatever type axolotl they have the sex organs of.

 

[jennifer]

It would be interesting to try. In my limited experience, embryo manipulations that sound simple in theory may still have a high rate of technical failure and/or infection. You might have to make a number of attempts before it worked, but it sounds do-able.

 

[mik]

All though these are v interesting, certainly novel, I don't think I could do that to an axie.

Question: These are all white bodies with dark heads...Why isn't there a photo of white heads and dark bodies too? Didn't they survive or were they just thrown out?

Seen the site but couldn't read Japanese...

Regards,