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South Korean Scientists Create Glowing Dog
cultiv8 writes "A research team from Seoul National University (SNU) said the genetically modified female beagle has been found to glow fluorescent green under ultraviolet light if given a doxycycline antibiotic. The researchers, who completed a two-year test, said the ability to glow can be turned on or off by adding a drug to the dog's food. 'The creation of Tegon opens new horizons since the gene injected to make the dog glow can be substituted with genes that trigger fatal human diseases,' the news agency quoted lead researcher Lee Byeong-chun as saying. He said the dog was created using the somatic cell nuclear transfer technology that the university team used to make the world's first cloned dog, Snuppy, in 2005."
Who's (modified for the article) punchline is.
"Hey, I'm a programmer, I don't have time for a princess, but hey, a glowing dog, now that's cool"
George Clinton's Atomic Dog
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuyS9M8T03A
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/5354635/Scientists-create-glowing-dog
'The creation of Tegon opens new horizons since the gene injected to make the dog glow can be substituted with genes that trigger fatal human diseases,'
Now, just substitute "can be" with "will be"...
Ok this was a proof-of-concept experiment to make a transgenic dog using Dox-inducible expression. It might be useful for some stuff since dogs are a genetic model for some human diseases but still not THAT cool... What I am REALLY looking forward to is someone doing a homologous replacement of Tbx5 with Tbx4 in chickens (pehaps by using zinc finger nucleases). This would most likely change the development of the wings to front-legs. A four-legged chichken - THAT would be cool. When that proof-of concept experiment would be done we could do the same for a number of other birds - ostriches for example (would be neat riding beasts)... and with some proper breeding we might even be able to generate something similar to dinosaurs :P
While I don't mean to belittle the work done by these scientists, I want to point out a common mistake used in science journalism - referring to GFP as "glowing". It does not glow, in any sense of the word. It fluoresces, which means you need to shine blue or UV light on it and examine it through a filter that removes the incident light, and then it will appear green. It can appear quite amazing under those conditions, but you can't take this dog out for a walk at night and see it emitting green light. You won't even see it reflecting green light, unless you take him near a UV source.
There is a biological technique that does cause things to glow, but it's more complicated than a single protein so is not as commonly used as GFP.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
Pics of the cute little sucker - both in the dark and in daylight:
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/south-korean-scientists-create-glowing-dog-report-20110728-1i0wi.html
According to Nietsche, God is dead since at least 1882, which means that the source code is in public domain even by the standards of Disney. Sorry, no bonus.
[Feeding a troll? Sure, the bigger a piece, the better, more chance of choking!]
This is Slashdot. Common sense is futile. You will be modded down.
as somebody pointed out already a dog is a nice approximation of what human body would do in case of certain diseases. Now it is all yours to determine whether this is done to make better drugs of terms of efficiency in curing stuff, making better drugs in terms of curing stuff only as good as is enough for profit or makingstuff that kills people effectively or some other purpose. I for one would tip it is either 2 or 3 but it may be that some naive scientists lied to a politician and actually did 1 - I mean it is possible even if not likely.
Imagine a burglar who comes to your house. A pitbull growling in the dark - that's already pretty scary. A glowing growling pitbull, that's super-scary.
I like how they always say "could lead to a cure for Alzheimer's" every time they use genetic engineering to do a nerdy prank. There is need or market demand for glowing dogs, no problem being solved or cost reduced. Sooner or later someone's going to let the DNA loose and nature is going to get hurt.
Gently reply
The gene that causes the dog to glow under ultraviolet light when a certain food is given to it, can have the gene replaced with one dogs and humans share. This can help test gene therapy to help cure these genetic disorders.
The mutation is just reflecting an external UV light. It would be much cooler if it could actually *generate* light. Imagine a dog that could glow like a glow worm.
Curing stuff by triggering the disease? No thanks. Sounds more like genetically engineering people to have a built-in kill switch.
Professional Genius
Are they not closer to human physiology ... or is that just BS so nobody feels bad about the god-awful things they do to pigs in the name of science/medecine? But then Korea has a bit of a hate-on for dogs so it makes sense.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Why this news? Dog is born puppy, then you feed it and it glowing. Keep feed it and it keep glowing until all glow up.
people who do research on household pets. I consider my dog to be part of my family and when I hear of asshole scientists doing research on what would otherwise be someone's pet it really pisses me off. There is no reason for that or any dog to glow or have any other "modification". This just backs up my observation that most of these people are a$$holes.
I understand your sentiment, but bear in mind that every society draws an arbitrary line between the animals we befriend and those we eat. You protect your dog and eat bacon. In korea some dog breeds are befriended while other breeds are food.
Thanks for putting my feeling to words. However, I must admit that this feeling is somewhat hypocritical. I mean, just taking pity on an animal because you happen to like it. Pigs for example are equally smart and adorable (although less handsome) as dogs, yet we put them in small cages and butcher them by the millions. This one dog being cloned and maybe not even having a particularly bad life is bliss by comparison.
Meanwhile people whose child or spouse is spared from death by this same research feel quite differently about it.
So...are you saying you'd prefer they should stop all animal experimentation, or only those animals that are pets to someone out there? Which is quite a broad range of animals.
Or perhaps you prefer animals to be natural and not be messed about with humans? Which means that a significant number of dog breeds would be considered monstrous by you.
Or maybe you just mean genetic experiments? Or drug based? Or do you also consider experiments in changing their diet? Psychological experimentation? Environmental manipulation? Etc, etc.
They are trying to use non-human animals in place of humans since we have major gripes about human experimentation. As you consider all dogs to be at the "level" of humans, this would, of course, cause you discomfort. However, not everyone sees it like that. For some people, they seem to think that animals, dogs, cats, mice, naked mole rats, alpacas, baboons, slugs, roaches, cockatoos, parrots, etc are all more preferable to experiment on than human beings. Usually with an insane amount of oversight now (at least in the US of A), but they still trudge on to get this shit done.
Are they assholes? Who knows. If you talk to PETA, they're probably Satan himself, assfucking Hitler with Osama in the back (TOOT TOOT MAN TRAIN). If you talk to people that benefit from treatments pioneered and verified through animal testing, polio/heart surgery/leprosy/etc, would probably say they're decent people. If you talk to the people themselves, you'll probably find some of them just want to help people and damn the animals while others are bleeding hearts who'll drop out of animal experimentation after one too many puppies dying on them.
Do I think animal experimentation is good? Yes. Do I wish there were alternatives so we wouldn't have to do it? Hell yes. Would I prefer if we could use people who step forward and sell their bodies to science to get experimented on? Oh fuck yes. None of that ethical shit about "animals don't want to do it" or "it's cruel to them" if people stood up and said "YES, EXPERIMENT ON ME FOR A MILLION DOLLARS." Like that cow in Hitchhikers that wanted to be eaten.
Anyway, scientists aren't douchebags unless they're douchebags and experimenting on animals means very little as an indicator of their douchebaggery. It just means that you probably love animals a shitton more than these scientists, the people supporting these scientists, the people running oversight on these scientists, and the people raking money on the successes of these scientists.
It's ALIVE! [insane cackle]
While this is serious science, there's a whiff of mad science about it. If this were my project, I'd dine out at science fiction conventions for the rest of my life on this.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The way that's written, my first thought was using dogs as bioweapons. I doubt that's really the case, so what do they really mean by this?
They're not destroying the Earth. They're just Genetically Engineering with Extreme Prejudice.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
Great! Now I don't have to pick my dog up, break it in half, and shake.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
So what? My cat can produce spots on the carpet that glow under a fluorescent UV light. I suppose if we had a dog, the cat could pee on the dog and make it glow too. But you don't see cats running of to publish stuff in journals; they have too much important napping and paw-licking to do instead.
Mr. President, we *must* develop our own glowing dog before the North Koreans develop this technology too.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Thank you, I was beginning to wonder if I was the only one who read that sentence correctly, as-written.
Corporate sponsorships. Yep, ads on animals, e.g. flashing on green sea turtles. And a talking chimp.
The late Michael Crichton already wrote about it in Next.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Your point is valid. I just wish that research can get to a point where most of the modelling is done on super computers (cray, big blue etc. I know some of it has already being done but progress can't come too soon. On the other hand I do like the pig for dinner. At one time I considered having one of those pot bellied pigs for a family pet but my wife pretty much vetoed that before I could make a good arguement.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
I said glow in the dark mosquitos not beagles.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
shucks, i have no mod points left +1
You resisted the urge to make a "try the special of the day" remark. +1
Atlas Shrugged : Thematic Story
The opening dialog of Zhasu's intro in The Lion King, addressed to Scar was, "Didn't your mother teach you not to play with your food?". Looks like we could ask the Korean scientists the same thing.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
This could turn out to be an energy saving breakthrough. Just imagine the annual energy savings from being able to dramatically reduce lighting levels in restaurants.
Now we can see dinner delivery coming at night.
I swear this story sounds familiar...
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
I dunno, I've eaten dog before (tends to taste a bit like what it was eating, coconut and scraps, yech). I also had a dog that got hit by a car and the neighbors got to it before we did. Apparently they ate well that night. Shit happens. Things are born, die, sometimes get eaten by other things. That said I could never eat my own dog (extreme starvation situation excepted). Your emotional attachment is just that, an emotional attachment and personally I'm fine with offending your sensibilities if it yields a cure for some nasty disease.
All that said however, I'm a firm believer that *all* animals should be treated with compassion and respect. I consider brutal treatment of cows destined for a grease burger just as despicable as torturing lab monkeys with toxic cosmetics. Why single out dogs for special treatment?
90% of the wealth is in 2% of the pockets. Bummer to be in the majority.
Perhaps I'm in too much of a mad scientist mindset, but the summary sounded to me like they were making practice runs for an injectable kill switch for humans. "Mr. Bond, I've altered your DNA, making the serum I hold in my hand a deadly poison only to you." Better yet, if the villain has read his evil overlord list, he'd just tell Bond that the serum is a poison, and modify his minions' DNA so the same serum activates their soldier boosts. Watch and laugh as Bond tries to kill his guards with it, only to make them stronger.
You have to really trust your geneticist if you're going in for recombinant DNA therapy...
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(first thing I thought of after seeing this)
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Assassinations?
I agree that ALL animals should be treated with compassion and respect. I believe that we humans are the alpha species on this planet and thus bear the responsibility for animals and the environment (theirs and ours). I was just singling out dogs because that was the subject of the article.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
Add some UV night lights and strap a small barrel of rum to the collar: You won't trip over the dog anymore and you can easily find you liquor.
Scorpions are already UV fluorescent but are a real pain to train. Dogs are much safer to hold and pet.
The real question is - how does it taste?
Ha ha. I know. Bad Korean Joke. :D But given that I know of Korean-Americans whose Korean-national relatives DO still eat dogs, and consider it to be a delicacy, - - it IS teh FUNNY!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Brought to you by Ryan Industries.
It's an amazingly useful protein for scientific research... Because of its research utility it's become a ubiquitous tool for molecular and cell biology. Indeed, in October of 2008 Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, and Roger Y. Tsien were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their brilliant contributions to our modern scientific use of GFP, with The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences calling GFP a "guiding star" and likening its research development to the invention of the microscope.
Curing stuff by triggering the disease? No thanks. Sounds more like genetically engineering people to have a built-in kill switch.
Seriously?
How do you expect anyone to test potential cures without having a sufferer of the disease to try to cure?
You have to be able to repro the bug, before you can test the fix.
No, that would involve fatally gene-tweaked donkeys.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
What could go wrong with this?
surely not starting the zombie invasion.
Be seeing you...