Glow in the Dark Beagle

It helps convince skeptics that they can do cloning - like an advertisment of their skillset. Probably they are looking at the pet owner's market.
 
I wonder if they started with the same process that created Alba the transgenic rabbit and the transgenic monkeys that followed about a year later?
 
I cant even think of a purpose for that other than jack the ebay price up on it..

I can see it now..

you too can own your OWN Gluppy!!
 
One of the very first bioengineered products after a frost resistant tomato was a glow in the dark tobacco... they love pulling those little glow genes from the plankton and inserting it in other things...
 
Faithfulservant said:
you too can own your OWN Gluppy!!
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But so quickly they grow into glogs.

I wonder if glog poop glows in the dark, too? Might make it a bit easier not to step in while roaming the back yard at midnight...

"Watch it! Don't step in the glog gloop!"
 
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I would be very skeptical of this. Lee Byeong-chun was associated with Dr. Hwang Woo-suk, who falsified data regarding cloning.
 
Fair enough...I suppose we should discount Teilhard de Chardin's work on the basis of his association with the Piltdown Man scandal?

Transgenic implantation of glowing genes isn't anything novel, the "glowing genes" have been used for decades by researchers to tag the stuff they are working on. In the case of Alba the rabbit those glowing genes were inserted into the initial egg-sperm embryo, thereby marking the whole critter:

GFP BUNNY

Alba, the glowing rabbit that made headlines two years ago for being, well, a glowing rabbit, has met an untimely death, according to the French researcher who genetically engineered her.

Alba the glowing rabbit was 4 years old. Or 2-1/2, depending on who's talking.

The bunny died about a month ago for reasons that are not clear, said Louis-Marie Houdebine, a genetic researcher at France's National Institute of Agronomic Research.


"I was informed one day that bunny was dead without any reason," Houdebine said. "So, rabbits die often. It was about 4 years old, which is a normal lifespan in our facilities."

Alba was an albino rabbit engineered by splicing the green fluorescent protein (GFP) of a jellyfish into her genome. Houdebine said he did not believe the GFP gene played a role in the animal's demise.
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RIP: Alba, the Glowing Bunny

Alba the rabbit had jellyfish genes implanted, as far as I know so did the monkeys. I don't recall what the puppies had implanted in order to glow red, but I would think it wasn't this particular jellyfish gene.

The whole field of cloning is a wild frontier, and there is still a lot of room for fraud, so the point of taking things with a grain of salt is well worth making. Part of the concern with Alba was that she not be released publically. There was concern over her "genes" entering the gene pool in either the captive/pet or wild rabbit populations.
 
Scientists in the U.S., Japan and in Europe previously have cloned fluorescent mice and pigs, but this would be the first time dogs with modified genes have been cloned successfully, Lee said.

He said his team took skin cells from a beagle, inserted fluorescent genes into them and put them into eggs before implanted them into the womb of a surrogate mother, a local mixed breed.
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Korean Scientists: We've Cloned Glow-In-The Dark Beagles
 
juantoo3 said:
Fair enough...I suppose we should discount Teilhard de Chardin's work on the basis of his association with the Piltdown Man scandal?

Transgenic implantation of glowing genes isn't anything novel, the "glowing genes" have been used for decades by researchers to tag the stuff they are working on. In the case of Alba the rabbit those glowing genes were inserted into the initial egg-sperm embryo, thereby marking the whole critter:

GFP BUNNY



RIP: Alba, the Glowing Bunny

Alba the rabbit had jellyfish genes implanted, as far as I know so did the monkeys. I don't recall what the puppies had implanted in order to glow red, but I would think it wasn't this particular jellyfish gene.

The whole field of cloning is a wild frontier, and there is still a lot of room for fraud, so the point of taking things with a grain of salt is well worth making. Part of the concern with Alba was that she not be released publically. There was concern over her "genes" entering the gene pool in either the captive/pet or wild rabbit populations.
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juantoo3 said:
Korean Scientists: We've Cloned Glow-In-The Dark Beagles
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This is the part from the article that I'm really skeptical about:

He said his team took skin cells from a beagle, inserted fluorescent genes into them and put them into eggs before implanted them into the womb of a surrogate mother, a local mixed breed.
Six female beagles were born in December 2007 through a cloning with a gene that produces a red fluorescent protein that make them glow, he said. Two died, but the four others survived.
The glowing dogs show that it is possible to successfully insert genes with a specific trait, which could lead to implanting other, non-fluorescent genes that could help treat specific diseases, Lee said.
The scientist said his team has started to implant human disease-related genes in the course of dog cloning, saying that will help them find new treatments for genetic diseases such as Parkinson's. He refused to provide further details, saying the research was still under way.​


I want to know what sort of applications he has in mind.
 
The people that perpetrate such creations must view their creation as a commodity, rather than a sentient being. I wonder how they would feel if they had been born and found that they were such a deliberately created freak.

s.
 
seattlegal said:
I want to know what sort of applications he has in mind.
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If I understood Dr. Collins lecture well enough, I think what the research is at primarily is to be able to tailor treatment to individual patients.

He mentioned that in some minor sense this was already being done in a very small percentage of cases (I forgot which type of cancer), and the hope was that as human genome sequencing became more cost effective as a diagnostic tool that treatments could eventually be tailored specifically to a patient's needs.
 
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Snoopy said:
The people that perpetrate such creations must view their creation as a commodity, rather than a sentient being. I wonder how they would feel if they had been born and found that they were such a deliberately created freak.

s.
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Ah good! A discussion about the ethics of such research and applications!

Just to play devil's advocate for a moment...humans have treated other creatures as commodities for many thousands of years. Wealth has been counted in cattle at least as long as humans have been shepherds.

Some of the things we do to rats in order to discover that mascara and spinach are poisonous definitely point to the "less than sentient" attitude many hold.

Even that adorable little pedigreed puppy that so charmed us we just had to buy her...
 
juantoo3 said:
If I understood Dr. Collins lecture well enough, I think what the research is at primarily is to be able to tailor treatment to individual patients.

He mentioned that in some minor sense this was already being done in a very small percentage of cases (I forgot which type of cancer), and the hope was that as human genome sequencing became more cost effective as a diagnostic tool that treatments could eventually be tailored specifically to a patient's needs.
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What kind of treatments? {Is that too much to ask?} :confused:
 
juantoo3 said:
Just to play devil's advocate for a moment...humans have treated other creatures as commodities for many thousands of years.
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They certainly have.

This story reminded me of the first Planet of the Apes film where those barbaric apes carried out some research on one of their commodities - a human.

s.
 
seattlegal said:
What kind of treatments? {Is that too much to ask?} :confused:
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Perhaps. My understanding is limited not working in the field, and he was addressing students and faculty here at UF, particularly those working with genetics. So a lot of jargon went by me, but I did my best to keep up.

I don't recall the particulars, only that there was some progress being made with the treatment of at least one form of cancer by tailoring the treatment according to the patient's genome. Beyond that it was outside the scope of my understanding. Sorry if I'm not much help. :eek:
 
Snoopy said:
They certainly have.

This story reminded me of the first Planet of the Apes film where those barbaric apes carried out some research on one of their commodities - a human.

s.
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Ah! Or Greystoke, when Tarzan finds his "mother's" cadaver splayed out on a table...and goes berserk.

Yet, one must concede that so much of our medical progress has been on the backs and bodies of other critters, without which medicine would still be in the Middle Ages. Except neurology...so much of our modern medical understanding of the human brain was at the expense of so many Jewish prisoners at the hands of Josef Mengele.
 
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