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Cloned, Glow in the Dark Cats
eldavojohn writes "Well, you can finally get genetically modified cloned animals. South Korean scientists have shown it is possible to alter a protein via therapeutic cloning to 'artificially [create] animals with human illnesses linked to genetic causes.' The images of these animals are amazing. This research was headed by Kong Il-keun, the first person in the country to clone cats in 2004." There is always the chance that this is a hoax, but far too amusing to ignore.
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I can has bioluminescence?
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Now they have food-lit dinner instead of candle lit dinner?
Those images do not look like images representative of cloned GFP containing animals that I have seen. Rather the green cat look slike the image was taken through a green filter or filtered light and the cat on the left simply looks illuminated by a laser. Whether or not these animals truly represent transgenic fluorescent animals from these images at least leaves me suspicious...
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You really call that image "amazing"? Hardly. Hell, give me 2 cats and 2 flashlights and I'll come up with a better image.
Also, I'm putting my money on hoax.
Anyone else think the comments just weren't rendering right before they turned off ABP and saw ads?
Yes, they run a little-known custom Ubuntu release...Fluorescent Feline.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
*turns off headlights*
Now maybe I won't trip over them as I stumble around in the dark, on my way to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
And if we plug one into a light socket, will it glow brighter? Can I use one as a night light?
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
I'm waiting for the version that's part cat, part rabbit, and part spacecraft.
[Insert pithy quote here]
these cats won't be able to hunt mice at dance clubs or pot dens.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Whereas this might be the first glow in the dark cat (for which I can think of many, many uses), there have been glow in the dark mice for ages (although now I wonder for how much longer). Also many animal models for human genetic diseases already exist, including fruitfly with early onset Alzheimer's disease, and mice with Down syndrome. I'm sure there are tons more.
My cat is already horrible at catching mice. I can't imagine she would catch any if she glows.
...come to think of it can you make the mice glow instead??!!!
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I've always read that cat blood glows in the dark, something I've always wanted to see. And even though I have two wild and rambunctious cats, I've never seen fresh blood besides that crusty stuff in their ears from excessive scratching. Cats must be incredibly resilient not even considering their ability to fall from great heights.
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I'll take one for the wife please. Can you make it pink? She really likes pink. And one that doesn't shed, get rid of the shedding gene. And how about one that doesn't need food, doesn't poop, doesn't spray, no claws and not moody. Hmm, I just described a stuffed cat. I'll take a stuffed cat please.
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If we put it in a box and dont look...will it still glow?
This is astoundingly disturbing and irresponsible. I can't get over it, especially in light of where this took place: Asia.
It's already profoundly simple for diseases to jump from one species to another, with either one species being a host carrier or an ill, infected carrier, and it's all the more common to happen with species which are:
a) genetically and physiologically similar, ie. from pigs to humans, or from primates to humans (monkeypox)
b) creatures which have regular contact, i.e. from cats to humans, deer to humans (chronic wasting disease), cattle to humans (mad cow), etc.
And, specifically, a combination of the two: something like AIDS/HIV.
Combining a species which has close, daily proximity with both humans and other cats, and which has the propensity to have large, expansive populations seems downright foolish. A parasite or virus from normal cats manages to get into the cloned cat (where it wouldn't infect the human, normally), mutates to the newer genes, and then migrates to the researchers. Voila, instant new disease (with potentially horrid results).
(on a side note: anyone with kids who have been scared by cat eyes in a dark corner (my 3-year-old son would not go past the 'spare room' which is the cat's room for weeks after he saw the cat's eyes reflecting the hallway light) realize the potential for these cats as useful babysitters: kids, leave your room and the demoncat will get you!)
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At least these ones will be less likely to get run over by cars at night!
Unless the drivers are cat-haters...
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According to the article, these cats only look that way under ultraviolet light. People often confuse FLUORESCENCE with PHOSPHORESCESCENCE. The latter is transmissive and the former is refective. From Wiki: Phosphorescence is a specific type of photoluminescence related to fluorescence. Unlike fluorescence, a phosphorescent material does not immediately re-emit the radiation it absorbs. The slower time scales of the re-emission are associated with "forbidden" energy state transitions in quantum mechanics. As these transitions occur less often in certain materials, absorbed radiation may be re-emitted at a lower intensity for up to several hours. In simpler terms, phosphorescence is a process in which energy absorbed by a substance is released relatively slowly in the form of light. This is in some cases the mechanism used for "glow-in-the-dark" materials which are "charged" by exposure to light. Unlike the relatively swift reactions in a common fluorescent tube, phosphorescent materials used for these materials absorb the energy and "store" it for a longer time as the subatomic reactions required to re-emit the light occur less often.
Does that mean I can finally get a goldfish night light?
This is for research only, so U can see if a protein is expressed by attaching a UV marker to it. It also doesn't glow unless U shine UV light on it. Don't expect glowing cats in pet stores.
But do they glow in the dark after they blend?
Cheers.
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There's a difference between suspension of disbelief (if you are referencing Heros - something that could be explained by being understanding of our current science), not-supposed to be technical (if you are referencing Dresden files - face it, that's magic), redundancy by trying to sound like you know something you don't (the Eureka quote), and campy plots (most scifi)
The first two are fine in fiction/science fiction - if you don't like them, I'd avoid watching shows with faster than light travel, and stuff like that.
I don't mind the first two - suspension of disbelief are needed for fiction anyway. The third irks the hell out of me, learn it or don't talk about it. The fourth - it can be annoying if it goes to far.
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No, they are florescent according to the article. That wouldn't qualify as 'glow in the dark' since they dont make their own light.
still cool tho.
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Man...you don't see many dogs or cats in many Korean or Vietnamese neighborhoods as it is....but, now that they glow in the dark???
Those poor little critters really don't stand a chance.....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Yes, but I couldn't resist the chance to combine the two. OMG! PONIES! Florescent pink, genetically modified pony clones!!!11!!!
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I get it! Okay how's this..
"You call that comment a pointless refutation that has no actual substance? Hardly. Hell, give me a scientific breakthrough and an ignorant bastard and I'll come up with a better pointless refutation that has no actual substance."
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I use red fluorescent protein all the time in the lab - the photo in TFA looks pretty real to me, as you excite RFP with green coloured light (around 510-555 nm) to cause it to emit red fluorescence (607-610 nm for mRFP1/mCherry). TFA didn't say which of the many RFPs they used to make the cats, but if they did, and you wanted to see the fluorescence, you'd have to illuminate the cat in the dark with a green-wavelength light to see the red fluoro emission. And a nonfluorescent cat with white fur would appear to be green. Because the RFP cat has white fur (or so the article says), it would look greenish too, so they must have done something to avoid that and still make the red fluoresce.
For the simple reason that cats are hard to breed (require much more food and space than small rodents) and hard to clone (usually the higher up in the evolution tree, the harder to clone).
That's why they aren't very popular research subject,
Usually in research, nowadays, specially when genetic engineering is available :
- You use mutated insects, yeast, etc. If you only wan to study some genetic stuff.
- If you absolutely need mamals, you use mice. If no mouse has what you need, you need a mutated/cloned mouse, like some humanised strains. Far easier to breed and feed than bigger mamals.
- If you definitely need human-sized organs, you use swines. And use humanisation mutation if you need.
Most other animals are getting lot less popular by the day.
The other reasons to use specific genetic types of specific animal is to give better control and reproductibility to research.
It's easier to replicate some research and find the same results if you that the authours used a specific given strain of mice, rather than some random animal.
In such circumstance, cloning genetically engineered cats has little purpose.
Appart maybe from the "I haz successfully cloned a lolcat !" (to prove that a notoriously hard target was achieved).
Or if counting on some commercial application (successfully cloning transgenic cat : easier to duplicate cat with interesting genes such less likely to cause allergy. Instead of breeding both sex and hope that the mutation il pass to the next generation, you just make copies of 1 successful cat.
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All your glow-cats are belong to us.
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No, not because some researcher who happened to be from the same country made one. :
:
Because fluorescent cats obviously look silly (and thus make very good prank material), and don't make really sense from a scientific point of view
- They are seldom used in research nowadays (for the reasons I said before : it's cheaper to work with smaller mammals or even simplier subjects if you don't need mamals)
- Cloning cats has already been done.
- The only new thing is having cloned cats *with* a mutation, for which, as I said, I fail to see advantages that aren't offered already by cloned genetically engineered mice (with the added bonus of being easier and faster to breed).
- This is not Nature, this is the "Bizness" section of Korea Times.
Also for the finer details
- As far as I know, cat fur doesn't tend to glow green in ultra violet light (in fact, for what I know, most animal furs don't glow in UV light which is handy to help diagnosing fungi-infections which DO glow in UV light. Also known as "Wood's lamp test" in Dermatology).
Thus, this image may be photoshoped by TFA's author as a prank and not pulled out of a real scientific paper.
- Angora species wouldn't have been the best species to show of body fluorescence (because of the thick fur blocking the light)
That's why I initially suspected that TFA may be a prank.
But then, some googling around revealed that there was actually a paper published in Biology of Evolution.
So this maybe isn't a prank, after all.
Dolly was the first cloned *mammal*.
:
:
Other species have been cloned before that.
When going "higher up on the evolutionary" we start to see appearing a lot of peculiar modification on the DNA : epigenetic modification. That's information not contained inside the sequence, but additional modification made to the DNA molecule. It differs a lot between somatic cells and germ-line cells. As a matter of fact, they even differ between genetic material you received from your mother and genetic material you received from your father. Also somatic cell may have accumulated some damage and mutation (that's why there are mechanisms such as telomers to keep count of division cycles and may be part of the explanation of why somatic cells don't divide much).
Thus, when cloning mammals you're starting with very poor quality material.
As a result, the yields aren't very good
- With dolly, 277 eggs were used to create 29 embryos. Three lambs where born, only Dolly survived.
- With the fluo-cat : 176 embryo were implanted in 11 surrogate mothers. Only 3 successful pregnancies, with only 2 live kitten at arrival.
In comparison, frogs are much more easy to clone (probably because one may find nice undifferentiated cells in their body to get clean material for cloning)
Mice are also known to have higher success rate (Dolly was around ~0.3%. First mouse cloning experiment encountered ~2% success rate), probably because of slightly less DNA modification hampering the cloning procedure.
Also mice have another big advantage above cats in cloning
- once you got at least a couple of cloned mice, it's then very easy to produce a huge amount of this peculiar strain of mice, simply by controlled selective breeding of you clones, because mice are quickly fertile and reproduce very quickly.
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