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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."
I can just see all the bacon dishes using this in the future if the meat glows too.
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
Because I always wanted fluorescent transplant organs! :)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
And let's see how long they last versus night predators.
No! No! No! I wanted "Green eggs" and "ham". Not "Green eggs and ham". Green eggs. Not green ham.
Glowing or not, why would you be such an insensitive jerk to call them "chinese pigs"?
Sounds like the typical behavior of your average *american pig* if you ask me.
That'll do pig, that'll do.
I can see it now, a dimly-lit chinese restaurant, couples whispering sweet nothings at their tables for two, dining by the eerie green glow of their mushu pork.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Food critics will now have only glowing comments about it.
I should be a ashamed about posting that but I'm not.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Glowing Pigs. Glowing Pigs dude. Pigs glowing in the dark! That's why.
If you read Russian, check out When a crayfish whistled by Teffi
Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?
I realize it's dark in there but this seems a little extreme...
If only Frank could have lived to see the birth of not one, but a litter of Sons of Mr. Green Genes....
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
The other parent doesn't have matching genes. We can add genes to pigs (like those needed to make more human-compatible organs for transplant) and expect the traits to be passed down the line.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
If they grow wings we're screwed
Excuse me while I gather the virgin sacrifice and assemble the pentagram required to solve your problem
When "glow green" genes are spliced into an organism, that's usually a gene for the expression of "Green Fluorescent Protein," a protein native to Aequorea jellyfish. Green Fluorescent Protein, as the name implies, is "fluorescent," not bioluminescent or phosphorescent. The excitation and subsequent emission of fluorescence occurs on a very fast timescale (as opposed to phosphorescence, where you can "charge" a material with light, then take it to a dark place, where it will emit light gradually). Therefore, you need to shine a light on fluorescence materials to make them glow- shining a light in the blue or near UV (black light) wavelengths on one of these pigs will cause them to absorb that light, and in turn emit light which is green in color.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
It's a blue dye, that passes harmlessly through your system, often used in medical procedures.
..........FULL STOP.
Fluorescent, bioluminescent, phosphorescent...
To a layman, they all mean "glowy." The differences are technical.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
I cant help but wonder what goes through the mind of the pig when it sees it glows green, I mean I know they're not exactly rocket scientists but from what I remember pigs are fairly clever, I wonder if this causes them all sorts of mental distress... Are there any people here that know anything about animal behaviour that might know?
If it does cause the pig severe stress that would be terrible... we dont want it spoiling the meat.
So Skulldilocks threw acid on the schoolchildrens' faces, cause somebody from the bible told her to do it!
I, for one, welcome our lambent porcine overlords.
It's news because putting new and odd genetic modifications into large mammals is a tad newish. Having them passed successfully rather than culled out of the gene pool by massive failure of the original animal, sterility, natural recoding in the sexual reproduction process, or unviable offspring is interesting.
Oh, and having a farm-fresh human liver for drunk Uncle Sal is Stuff That Matters.
Pimp my kidneys!
Who really cares? If the general intent was not racist, what's the point of pretending that it was?
I asked a question on a message board once about lowrider bicycles, and called them "Hispanic-type lowrider bikes". One guy (apparently Hispanic) got hugely offended, and insisted that I apologize. I was not denigrating "Hispanic bicycles", just trying to describe a particular bicycle by saying what other kinds of bicycles it was not.
I told him that I was of German descent, and that I wanted him to apologize to me for all the times that people call Porsches "German cars". He refused, and so did I.
It is only a child who would complain of such a minor thing--because it's only younger people that would mistake slavery, separate drinking fountains and lack of voting rights to be the moral equivalent of calling a bicycle "Hispanic" or a pig "Chinese".
~
*Whoosh!!*
It is only a child who would complain of such a minor thing--because it's only younger people that would mistake slavery, separate drinking fountains and lack of voting rights to be the moral equivalent of calling a bicycle "Hispanic" or a pig "Chinese".
[OT] True; I go further though, and say that his behaviour, which has become common amongst the 'easily offended minorities', is actually a form of *bullying*. It's a manipulative attempt at domination and subjugation of Westerners.
It's "news" because it's "new" (thats where the word comes from).
... see how easy that is? I swear someone pulls this lame 'not news' nonsense in virtually every slashdot thread.
If one feels a need to try show that one is more "clever" than those around them, who presumably naively think some news is new, one can actually easily "demonstrate" ANY news to not be "new" by twisting or distilling it into another different or more generic form that isn't new in and of itself. For example if someone wins an election and it's in the news, you can say "Let me get this straight: There was an election and someone won. why is this news ?"
I guess Kermit won't be alone anymore when he sings "It's not easy being green"
Only problem will be after a nuclear war, hard to tell if the pig was exposed to massive radiation, or is descended from escaped lab pigs!
Radioactive or not, I bet they still taste good.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
there are a few issues with that. first off, just making them glow is not terribly useful. usually you have to take tissue samples and do some science-y stuff. usually you can't do that to a living thing. sometimes it's possible, but frequently not. so you can either wait for them to die on their own or kill them. humans live too long, and you get charged with those pesky felonies if you try to kill them. "it's all in the name of science" you will say, as they drag you to the pokey. but they will not care. you'll have wasted your life trying to do medical science without being cruel to the poor little animals. too bad your great grandchildren might still die sitting on the organ transplant wait list. at least you didn't kill any animals.
I sure hope these guys are never exposed to gamma radiation. If they ever are, please for the love of god, Don't make them angry.
the short answer is you're right. it's a shadow. but that doesn't mean what you think it means. they ARE shining a light on the pig. UV though, not green.
the long answer, which is mostly covered previously, although not cohesively, is that normally, light visible to you is reflected, not emitted, and you can see both the source and the reflection. fluorescent light is emitted not reflected. and in this case, the light source is not visible, and the emitted light is.
for reflected light, you shine a full spectrum of light at something. some wavelengths are absorbed, some reflected. the reflected ones are the ones you see. so if it looks red, that means that red light is bouncing off, and blue light isn't. but if you only shine blue light it will NOT look red, since there is no red light to bounce off and be seen.
in fluorescence, a certain wavelength of light will be absorbed by the protein, the energy used to emit light at a completely different wavelength. so, sticking with the previous example, you shine blue light at your object, you see red light. the object absorbed the blue and changed it to red.
the fluorescent protien they used happens to absorb UV (which is not really visible to you) and turn it into green light (which is). you can see the difference in the emitted light in the shape of the shadow from the illumination source. make sense? UV is a very common fluorescent light activator because it's just a bit higher energy wavelength than the human visible spectrum and therefore, when you lose a little bit of energy in changing the wavelength, it becomes visible. quite helpful scientifically.
it's easier to grasp visually in person than in a photo, but you can trust me: i'm from the internet.
As this is exactly how gene-modding will lead to a significant crisis some day. I hope we come through it mostly intact.
I find being offended by me offensive.
That would be quite the bar trick if your liver started glowing when it processed alcohol, all ET style.
I think that there is a possibility here for a great new slashdot meme!
I just can't seem to think of anything with a glowing pig in it.
A bad analogy is like a leaky screwdriver.
At long, long last we have pigs that glow under UV light. And iPhones.
don't you think this brings us a step closer to the "pigoons" of Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake ?
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
I actually don't really have anything to say here. I kinda blew all my material on the subject line...
pshhh what a nerd, Tattoos are for losers, real men get glowing liver transplants.
it does make sense. the thing is that the techniques used to change the genes in the first place are not always perfect, nor are the imperfections easy to observe. so you didn't know for sure that every cell was being changed. or that the change wouldn't affect the animal's ability to reproduce. the big thing this serves to show is that the introduced genes ARE indeed getting added to EVERY cell in the parent pig, including the reproductive cells. it's not that hard to add genes to SOME cells. this happens all of the time. getting it to ALL the cells is harder. looking at the offspring is really just an elegant way to detect something in the parent that is hard to observe. "yeah, i'm gonna need you to check the DNA in every cell in the pig. yeah. i'm also gonna need you to some in saturday. yeah, that'd be great."
No kidding. That's because they're under a UV light. The pig's skin only fluoresces where the UV light shines.
@ASP.NET's parent-teacher meeting: "Little Johnny.NET is very bright, but he doesn't play well with others."
How do pigs glowing green passing genes lead to the future of breeding pigs for organs? Does the connection not show itself to anyone else?
Thanks for that - I've seen a number of articles in recent months about various genetically modified "glowing" creatures, and some mention of U.V. light, but I got the impression that they were being "charged up" with a UV light and that they continued to glow without illumination. As an emissive source, I would not expect the thing glowing to cast shadows on itself. So it's good to understand that they flouresce, but don't continue to emit without the light source - unlike night time golf balls that you charge up with a similar light and which continue to glow for several minutes after the illumination is removed. And thank you to the AC kiddies for the mindless reflections of manhood and intelligence - it's most enlightening.