Friday, February 22, 2013

Glowing Puppies?!

We all love puppies and having them as man's best friend, but scientists have taken it too far in engineering a beagle that glows. Under UV light, the little pup glows green! The scientists inject an embryo with a virus that has the fluorescent glow, and then use a surrogate dog mom. They use dogs becasue of their close gene make up in this allele to humans, and are hoping to soon be able to track all sorts of diseases, such as Alzheimers or Parkinson's, with this same method of transporting the gene. Which then starts the quesiton of animal testing and animal cruelty since the dog is used to track the progression of Alzheimer's. But when Tegon, the glowing dog, does glow, she experiences no harm.
This isn't the first we've heard of glowing animals; scientist in South Korea made glowing cats for the same purpose of genetically engineering animals to further research human disorders. They injected virus into the skin cells of the a cat. They then put that nucleaus into an egg and used a surrogate just like the beagle to foster the glowing cat. The whole point of cloning these animals to make them emit this light is, "... that if you can pass along the easy-to-recognize coding for fluorescent markers through cloning, you could eventually pass along more complex genetic coding.


Scientists have now been experimenting with dogs becasue of their closer gene make up in this allele to humans. I think this is a strange concept that, though the cats and dogs look pretty awesome, in truth it will take way much more to track Alzheimer's than a meer fluourescent virus. We have been engineering different types of animals, and exploring cloning for years now, and each step is in the direction of helping human's with diseases, but it seems like the science only gets cooler for readers and enthusiasts or just plain weird. The actual discoveries of genetically engineered animals haven't crossed over into the realm of human intellectual growth yet. Who knows, in the future maybe a glowing horse will help us find the cure for cancer. word count (355)

Carly Biedul


"Cloned Cats That Glow?!" Cosmic Log. NBC, 13 Dec. 2007. Web. 
Edelman, Robert, and Phyllis M. Hartroft. "Localization of Renin in Juxtaglomerular Cells of Rabbit and Dog Through the Use of the Fluorescent-Antibody Technique." American Heart Association: Circulation Research (2013): n. pag. Web. 
Viegas, Jennifer. "Genetically Modified Beagle." Beta News. Discovery Channel, 1 Aug. 2011. Web. 

15 comments:

  1. Does the fluorescence gene affect the cat's germline?

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  2. The choice of cats and dogs for their human-similar alleles seems odd to me considering the fact that bonobos or chimpanzees would be expected to be closer to humans in terms of genes. Maybe the technical difficulty increases?

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  3. Are the cats passing along the glowing trait or is it simply a matter of cloning? Are there cats born glowing?

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  4. Green fluorescent protein is used as a tag on produced proteins, but would altering the genes in one specific somatic cell to incorporate the glowing protein be inherited? I'm not sure, but I would think not. Because of this fact, I'm confused as to how this relates to evolution. As far as I can find, there have been no studies linking this to offspring of the genetically altered animals.

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  5. The scientists used a virus to create glowing animals, and so I wonder how they will somehow tag an allele for a certain trait and then show that in the phenotype.

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  6. Are these cats sterile or able to reproduce? If two glowing cats produce offspring could the glowing then be inherited?

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  7. Has a viable offspring generation between two glowing animals been produced? Has there been any success in incorporating the glowing trait into the genes of animals? If this trait is not heritable, then how could diseases be tracked? A glowing gene would need to be inserted/linked to the genes for the particular disease of interest. Otherwise the animals will just glow and no real medical progress can be made.

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  8. I feel like, despite the claims of potential usefulness in tracking the progression of diseases, this is just people doing things in the name of science. I fail to see, really, how having the innate ability to fluoresce would be any more beneficial if we can already target specific proteins with fluorescence in the first place. Specifically, with Alzheimers, it is debated that increased aluminum concentrations increase the risks of Alzheimers, so it would be practical to track the rate of aluminum transfer into brain tissue, or other bodily cells, but once again, I don't see how making this fluorescence an innate trait would be any more beneficial, especially when we having fairly reliable ways to tag aluminum. On an evolutionary standpoint, I'm curious to see, as are many other commenters, whether or not this glowing trait could be passed reproductively...

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  9. I recently did a project on the various different ways in which nano-tubules are used and one of the main uses we found was in disease tracking. Scientists would inject these nanotubes with the fluorescence discussed here and then inject into the patient so that the chemical could travel to particular parts of the body and not end up in every blood vessel. I wonder if they are doing something similar in this case.

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  10. It seems like this demonstrates the power of technology more than it demonstrates a useful scientific tool. It would be interesting to see if this fluorescence is heritable because that would have more important implications for evolution of the tracked alleles.

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  11. Does this genetic engineering play a role in the animal's survival? Although this may be harmful in some cases, but maybe it can also be used to help the animals by giving them an advantage.

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  12. Glowing cats and dogs might sound a bit weird, but artificially inserting fluorescence gene is common among many research projects (used for detection of certain gene).

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  13. So if we can make puppies glow, and their gene make up is closer to humans, can we make ourselves glow? O_O

    Very interesting article! I can see where the ability to glow could aid in discovering the locations of diseases, and I wonder if medicine will ever take that path.

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  14. It is awesome that these scientists have discovered a way to express fluorescent viruses within dog cells to make dogs glow, and in turn, might be able to use this technique to locate certain diseases. As Carly stated in the article though I think it will take a lot more than the use of this technique to track a disease such as Alzheimer's.

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  15. What role would inserting glowing genes play in domestic animals? Harmful or helpful?

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