Slashdot Mirror
Has Anyone Seen My Rabbit?
New submitter geoskd writes "Scientists at the university of Hawaii have created glow in the dark rabbits. Where can I get my hands on one of these critters? It would drive the cats nuts! These guys are missing a bet, they could sell these things for big bucks and use the money to further fund their research. This is the perfect gift for the geek who has "everything"."
The technique used is similar to the glow in the dark cats bred a couple of years ago. The fluorescence isn't the end goal of course; it just happens to be a very obvious marker that their genetic manipulation technique works. According to the researchers, "the final goal is to develop animals that act as barrier reactives to produce beneficial molecules in their milk that can be cheaply extracted, especially in countries that can not afford big pharma plants that make drugs, that usually cost $1bn to build, and be able to produce their own protein-based medication in animals."
Rabbits reach sexual maturity in 4 months. Gestation is one month That means you can see the results of two, almost three generations of genetic manipulation in a year's study.
Cows, on the other hand take 10 months for gestation + age of safe breeding. If you're going to do genetic research, choosing the one that "multiplies like rabbits" is generally the way to go in a laboratory setting.
moox. for a new generation.
They aren't phosphorescent (what most people consider to be 'glow in the dark'), they are fluorescent. They only glow under UV (black light) exposure.
Just have to point out, that the jellyfish protein they're talking about is green fluorescent protein (GFP). It fluoresces. This is not glow in the dark. You shine a blue light on GFP, it sends some of it back as green light. The only way it "glows" is if you filter out the blue excitation light you're shining on it. The light shining on the rabbits is actually quite intense compared to the fluorescent light you get back.
At 0:48, they switch from a normal view of the bunnies to a the fluorescence. The reason it's a cut and not just flipping off the lights is that they put a green filter over the camera and set up a bright blue light shining on the bunnies. The green filter filters out the blue light but not the green light from the rabbits. You can see the one rabbit dims for a split second, that's because the beam of blue excitation light moves for a second. Turn off the blue light and those rabbits would go dark along with everything else. I suppose they'd glow for a very short time longer than anything else due to the fluorescence taking slightly longer, but it would be far too fast for you to perceive.
Here's an example of some GFP sample on the microscope. Notice the bright blue light? That's what the article is calling "dark." (The orange filter in that example isn't the one you'd use to see fluorescence, it's what you'd use to keep you from blinding yourself by the blue light while moving the sample around.)