Slashdot Mirror

Humans have been doing genetic engineering as long as we've been civilized.

This is a myth. People haven't been doing genetic engineering like what we're talking about today. No Aztec or Babylonian farmer cross-bred fireflies and rabbits to create a glow in the dark rabbit or cross bred flounder with tomatoes and got tomatoes that have anti-freeze proteins in them.

So no, this is something *radically different* than what people have been doing in the past.

Not the traditional sort... http://www.ekac.org/transgenicindex.html

http://www.ekac.org/gfpbunny.html

Eduardo Kac's GFP Bunny, anyone?

Sounds like this from a while ago.

http://www.ekac.org/gfpbunny.html

Something like this?

Nah, more like this.

Eduardo Kac, artist ahead of his time: http://www.ekac.org/timcap.html

A few years back, Chicago-based conceptual artist Eduardo Kac spliced the green fluorescent protein from the jellyfish into the genes of a rabbit, creating Alba the bright-green glowing transgenic bunny. He was also working with Mexican hairless dogs for a glow unobscured by fur. And I read in a recent ish of Wired scientists are "modifying" misquitoes to actually prevent malaria when they bite, rather than transmit it.

Well, we already have a floursecent bunny

So, when will this cat be "mated" with Alba, the glow-in-the-dark bunny rabbit?

I won't get into the ethical implications of this, or how forward-looking it was, or whatever. Instead let me just mention that I saw the video of this piece being performed. OUCH. Guy has stones.

Quoted from Yosemite Sam: I hate rabbits

I feel cojoco's pain.

A couple of years back (in 2000, I think) and artist by the name of Eduardo Kac created the first glowing animal. Known as Alba the GFP Bunny, it was created as the first in a series of what he calls transgenic artwork. [http://www.ekac.org/gfpbunny.html]

In this instance it was a "work of art", and the rabbit was transformed using GFP (green fluorescent protein, originally from jellyfish). Oh, and Alba looks perfectly normal, except when you shine UV light on her, then she glows green.

You have seen the Fluorescent bunny haven't you? Its fluorescence doesn't come from eating a fluorescent fish, though. It was genetically modified to expressed GFP.

GFP (Green Fluorescent Protein) was first discovered in the early 1960's by Osamu Shimomura and Frank Johnson at Princeton. In 1994, Doug Prasher and Martie Chalfie at Columbia isolated the gene and started putting it into other organisms. It's been in use for transgenic organisms since then, so we're talking nearly 10 years. The artist you refer to is Eduardo Kac, a total hack and a fraud as far as I'm concerned. He didn't actually do any of the work involved in making the green bunny, he just claimed it as his own after it was made, Furthermore, he continually shows faked photoshopped pictures of a green bunny glowing. In truth, the protein is in the rabbit's skin, not its hair, so it would have to be shaved to be visualized. Not quite as cute that way though.

It's quite simple. There are several labs/companies out there that are attempting to make biosensors out of members of the green fluorescent protein family (of the green fluorescent bunny fame). This is done by introducing random and/or specific mutations to the gene encoding the fluorescent protein in the hopes of making it able to translate some biologically important phenomenon such as pH, redox levels, various metal ion levels (there's an especially slick one out there for detecting calcium levels, for example) into a detectable fluorescence signal. Naturally this takes a hell of a lot of work and the people who do this want to be compensated for their efforts, hence patents.

Now what about an unmodified, naturally occuring gene? Well, around about 1994 or 95 people started using green fluorescent protein (GFP) as a tool in cell biology and now if you do a search on PubMed you get 8661 articles. That's one incredibly useful little protein tool. Now in 1999 a new fluorescent protein DsRed was discovered, and it was cool. Being red, it was easier to see in cells which fluoresce in the blue and green ranges by themselves which made it valuable as a tool. Now these guys who found the organism, had the moment of genius to look for a fluorescent protein, found it, and made it all work naturally wanted to be compensated for it. Is this wrong?

They keep glowing and glowing and.....

Energizer will have to change their mascot to a Mutant Bunny...

I don't know about that, necessarily, depends how you look at it:
grep fluorescent_green_protein_gene JellyFish >> bunnygenes; cat bunnygenes > bunny_egg_cell; cat bunny_egg_cell | mama_bunny > glowing_baby_bunny.

Like the "core" Unix tools, our existing biotech tools ARE very "low-level", as you point out. We're certainly quite some way from the biotech equivalent of "higher-level" mix-and-match projects like php-gtk, but we've got some very useful building blocks to work with...including the project that is the subject of this article, which appears to be intended for building simulations of larger biochemical pathways...the next stage of biotechnology which we can't yet do much of, as you say. Sadly, this means I'm still probably at least a decade away from taking over the world with an army of Atomic Mutant Zombie Clones®

Incidentally, I'd be willing to bet that a determined and/or skilled individual can do a LOT with a bronze axe...but I think one level of analogy is plenty, so I'll avoid belaboring the point. Besides, I understand what you mean: Hype bad. Results good. :-) .