Cool Scientists Create Glowing Mice

mrbrown1602 writes "MSNBC is reporting that San Diego-based Anticancer, Inc. has sucessfully implanted the genes of a jellyfish in the hair follicles of mice, creating glowing mice... more here" Glowing elephants would be a cooler trick.

Comments

Re:Sick

[WolfWithoutAClause]

You've missed the point. The aim of the experiment isn't to make a small patch of fur on a mouse go green, that's pretty useless. The real aim of the experiment is to inject a set of genes into a live animal, so that cells take up the genes and grow.

They only used the flourescent marker to show that they'd successfully pushed the genes into the cells. It's not at all easy to push genes into a grown animal, the cell walls tend to not let any proteins in. In this case, they've apparently succeeded quite well.

Getting genes into an adult animal is a very important step forward. Some diseases may be curable with this kind of technique, for example, type-1 diabetes; which kills millions of people, might be tackled by treating a small area of skin to produce insulin at the right times.