Glowing Monkeys (via BBC News)
Scientists have created genetically modified primates that glow green when exposed to ultraviolet light. The “transgenic” marmosets, created by a Japanese team, are the first to pass on the modification to their children.
Future genetic modifications to primates could aid efforts to cure such diseases as Parkinson’s.
However, the results, published in Nature, raise a number of ethical questions about deliberately exposing a bloodline of animals to such diseases.
Scientists have managed to modify the genes of many living organisms in recent years, ranging from bacteria to mice. Mice have been particularly useful experimental models for studying a wide range of human diseases as modified genes are passed on from parents to progeny. However, mice are not useful for some human diseases because they are not sufficiently similar to produce effects that are meaningful to human disease. Studies of mice with Alzheimer’s disease, for example, were stymied simply because their brains were too small to scan at sufficient resolution.
Now, Erika Sasaki of the Central Institute for Experimental Animals in Japan, and her colleagues, have introduced a gene into marmoset embryos that allows them to build green fluorescent protein (GFP) in their tissues. The protein is so-called because it glows green under ultraviolet light in a process known as fluorescence. The protein has become a standard in biology and genetic engineering, and its discovery even warranted a Nobel prize.
