Iran creates "Glowing Green Mice" to show off Genetic Enegineering.

www.presstv.ir...
Iranian scientists have created green-glowing mice to demonstrate their expertise in sophisticated genetic-engineering techniques. "Our main purpose of such experiments is to display the abilities of (our) genetic researchers, something that our country has successfully accomplished," the Director of Iran's Academic Center for Education, Culture and Research told Mehr news Monday. "One of the activities that our researchers have conducted at the Rotyan Institute is producing green mice. In this project, a specific gene is inserted into the stem cells of a fetus," Dr. Hamid-Reza Tayyebi said. "The gene has a characteristic that allows it to change colors to purple when exposed to light," he explained. Dr. Tayyebi said that after inserting the DNA parts, the fetus is placed inside the womb of another mouse, which would give birth to a fluorescent green rodent. The leading Iranian researcher added that the ability to create such animals demonstrates how far the country has progressed in genetic sciences. Producing green mice was a method first adopted by scientists in 1999. The achievement proved the efficiency of a technique that uses sperm to insert new DNA.

This is pretty cool, now the raving kids can take it to the next level!

I wonder what implications this can have, and what horrible side effects it could bring.

reply to post by gandhi


I thought the red glowing puppies were cooler.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/f0f1127f4f85.jpg[/atsimg]
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.

[edit on 3-11-2009 by SLAYER69]