Red Rover, Red Rover: Glowing Puppies
Created in the same fashion as the glowing kitties we posted way back in December, 2007, scientists have bred transgenic (expressing a gene from another, unrelated organism) puppies that glow red under UV light. I don't want one. Ain't no devil dog livin' in this house!
A team led by Byeong-Chun Lee of Seoul National University in South Korea created the dogs by cloning fibroblast cells that express a red fluorescent gene produced by sea anemones.
Greg Barsh, a geneticist at Stanford University who studies dogs as models of human disease, says creating a transgenic dog is "an important accomplishment", showing that cloning and transgenesis can be applied to a wide range of mammals."I do not know of specific situations where the ability to produce transgenic dogs represents an immediate experimental opportunity," Barsh adds. But transgenic dogs will give researchers another potential tool to understand disease.
Eh, I thought it was so you wouldn't kick your dog on the way to the kitchen for a midnight snack. I don't know about this whole disease bit. Which reminds me: any of you good at identifying rashes? I can send pics.
Hit the jump for what the puppies look like when they're not glowing. Except the middle one, the middle one isn't a glower.
Fluorescent puppy is world's first transgenic dog [newscientist]
Thanks to Heather and JAKE!, who had Glo Worms when they were kids but they left the batteries in for too long and they corroded and their parents threw them away.
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