The END IS NEAR!! - MASSIVE Alligator Catfish Hybrids Coming

The END IS NEAR!! - MASSIVE Alligator Catfish Hybrids Coming

Hey there, this is Jordan, your Science Maniatics correspondent for today's awesome video. This is really taking the term Science Maniatics seriously. Have you ever heard of CRISPR? It's a tool scientists use to change the DNA of animals, plants, and now even mankind…imagine that. Recently, they used it on alligators and catfish!

Scientists took alligator eggs and used CRISPR to change a certain gene that controls the temperature at which the alligator's sex is determined. This means that by changing the temperature, they can control if the alligator is born a boy or a girl! This is supposed to help prevent the population of alligators from getting too skewed towards one sex.

But that's not all, the scientists didn't just stop at alligators. They also used CRISPR on catfish to make them grow faster. The catfish grew about 25% bigger and faster than regular catfish. The alligator gene that the scientists used on the catfish is called the alpha-crystallin B gene.