In Chinese culture, sea cucumbers are considered a delicacy, and are often served at banquets and dinner parties. However, one notch above the sea cucumber is the albino sea cucumber; a sea cucumber that lacks any kind of pigmentation. It was estimated in August of 2015 that 0.001% of all sea cucumbers have this rare phenotype. Because of their mutation, albino sea cucumbers are often consumed and bought by the rich. In fact, only a few years ago, five albino sea cucumbers were sold for about $26,000 US dollars.
At the Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Science, Dr. Yang Hongsheng is leading a genetic engineering program geared towards the breeding of white sea cucumbers. This year alone, about 150 million white sea cucumbers were bred and released to the public. By taking white cucumbers and allowing them to mate, the phenotype of the offspring can be manipulated and can allow for a large number of albino sea cucumbers to be bred, rather than having only a very slight chance of it happening in the wild. This is still a new technology, and has yet to be brought into the food industry, but it is very possible that one day the Chinese will be able to pick up a frozen pack of albino sea cucumbers from their local supermarkets.
A genetically engineered pig as well as genetically engineered salmon have recently emerged in the Canadian and American market as well. This is signifying the era of genetically engineered foods. Often times genetically engineered food is frowned upon because of its lack of organicness, but the increase in genetically engineered sea cucumbers could mean reducing the carbon footprint of China. If China could manage to do the same for all of it's other major food products from the sea, the production of the organisms could be done on land in farms, ultimately reducing the amount of ships in the oceans that could potentially be oceanic wildlife.
The link to the New York Times article can be found here.
The link to an article on the Genetic Literacy Project's website can be found here.
This is so interesting! It is strange to think that something like this is one of the only situations where the way an animal physically looks affects its desirability. Something like beef is so far removed from the living organism that if it came from an albino cow, nobody would ever know.
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