Glowing Chinese Pig Passes Traits to Young

porkpickle writes A cloned pig whose genes were altered to make it glow fluorescent green has passed on the trait to its young, a development that could lead to the future breeding of pigs for human transplant organs, a Chinese university reported."

Comments

Re:Glow in the dark bacon?

[the_humeister]

Not if you cook the meat. Cooking temperatures generally denature protein and render them without function, unless they're prions...

Re:Glow in the dark bacon?

[Hatta]

GFP is actually remarkably stable due to its barrel like structure that protects the chromophore within. This review article states:

Increasing temperature from 15 to 65C modestly decreases the 395-nm and increases the 470-nm excitation peak of mature wild-type GFP. Yet higher temperatures cause denaturation, with 50% of fluorescence lost at 78C

Pork is done at 160F, which is 71C. So you'd still have at least half of the fluorescence in a cooked pork chop as a raw one. There's bound to be some renaturation too when it cools, so you might actually get to enjoy a meal of green ham and eggs.