by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Back in the mid-'80s, when Zhiyuan Gong would stroll every morning from his apartment on Aylmer to McGill to work on his Ph.D, nobody had ever injected fish eggs with a special liquid from Russia that contained genes from sea anemones. Nobody in the world owned a pet zebrafish that would glow a dazzling blood red under black light. But Gong, who now lives in Singapore, has since changed all that.

The glowing fish Gong has produced at Singapore National University has made him a big name elsewhere, but he still considers Montreal his spiritual home and hopes to one day move back. "Those were the best years of my life and I still miss the great city of Montreal," he says.

If he packed up and came here however, the glowing transgenic zebrafish in his office wouldn't be welcome. Although sold around the world, including most of the States, under the brand name GloFish, Canada has temporarily banned Gong's invention. Environment Canada must first review its potential impact on our wildlife.

"I would say that's a paranoid concern," says Gong, noting that tropical fish can't survive in Canadian waters, and that even if they could, their glowing babies would eventually disappear.

In spite of the marketing and environmental excitement around a fish that looks really cool in a dark room, Gong downplays the small striped fish as a "learning model" and shrugs off the fame and fortune that awaits the creator of the world's first genetically altered, commercially available pet.

"I do not consider the invention of fluorescent fish to be a huge one and it is not important whether I will be a millionaire from this technology," he says. "What's important is that I created a live model for transgenic animal technology and this technology has a great potential to improve production of agriculture and aquaculture."

Gong, who had previously worked on a project to increase the health and size of Canadian fish stocks, next aims to develop a freshwater fish that glows in the presence of toxins. He's also trying to develop an edible fish vaccine into the food chain that would allow fish to be immunized against disease simply by eating smaller fish.

Although Montreal pet stores surveyed on Gong's GloFish seemed only vaguely aware of the controversial product, elsewhere in Canada they were a hot seller until government officials seized supplies. The fish - which are distributed under licence by a Texas-based company - are sold legally throughout most of the States even though concerns have been raised by many environmentalist organizations such as the Sierra Club. At least one lawsuit has been launched to ban the fish from the USA.

In Canada, one needs government permission before importing or producing a GloFish - or any other genetically altered animal. According to Kim Hibbeln, section head for biology at Environment Canada, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act of 1999 orders a 120-day evaluation period of such genetically altered beasts. The paperwork for the GloFish hasn't been sent as of yet, so the fish will remain illegal here for at least until June and perhaps beyond.