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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Planetar

    Join Date
    Dec 2006
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    Raleigh NC
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    Default The glow-in-the-dark kitty

    Seen on Smithsonian

    Quote Originally Posted by Smithsonian
    the Mayo Clinic scientists who created this glowing cat had a bigger goal in mind: fighting AIDS.

    The substance that makes the cat glow is a version of the green fluorescent protein that lights up the crystal jelly, a type of jellyfish that lives off the West Coast of the United States. Years ago scientists realized that the gene for GFP is a perfect marker when they insert another new gene into an organism. By inserting a version of GFP along with their gene of choice, they could easily see if they were successful because the organism would glow. Since the technique was first developed, researchers have made many glowing animals, including pigs, mice, dogs, even fish you can buy in the pet store.

    ...

    In this latest bit of research, published in Nature Methods, the Mayo Clinic scientists inserted a version of the GFP gene along with a gene from the rhesus macaque that blocks the feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV)—the virus that causes feline AIDS—into the unfertilized eggs of a cat. After those eggs were fertilized, they produced kitties that glowed green, showing that they also had the anti-FIV gene. Even better, subsequent generations of cats also glowed and had the anti-FIV gene.

    The researchers still have more work to do to determine whether the anti-FIV gene works in the cats. “We haven’t shown cats that are AIDS-proof,” study co-author Eric Poeschla told LiveScience. “We still have to do infection studies involving whole cats. That the protection gene is expressed in the cat lymphoid organs, where AIDS virus spread and cell death mostly play out, is encouraging to us, however.”
    That's from September 13, 2011. Not 1 APR, if anyone was thinking it.

    "We were looking to create an FIV-resistant kitty, but got a glow-in-the-dark one instead" has to be the most amusing thing I've read all year. And that makes a great "wizard did it backstory" for half the monster manual as well

    Respectfully,

    Brian P.
    "Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid."

    -Valery Legasov in Chernobyl

  2. - Top - End - #2
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    theangelJean's Avatar

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    Nov 2005
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    Sydney, Australia
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    Default Re: The glow-in-the-dark kitty

    Quote Originally Posted by pendell View Post
    Seen on Smithsonian



    That's from September 13, 2011. Not 1 APR, if anyone was thinking it.

    "We were looking to create an FIV-resistant kitty, but got a glow-in-the-dark one instead" has to be the most amusing thing I've read all year. And that makes a great "wizard did it backstory" for half the monster manual as well

    Respectfully,

    Brian P.
    "we got a glow-in-the-dark one instead" kind of misrepresents the intent of this science, and adds a sense of error or serendipity that really isn't there. How about this:

    We were hoping to find out if our new method of inserting a specific gene would create an FIV-resistant kitty. This method hasn't been tried in kitties before, so we needed a way to check the gene was actually inserted. We don't want to needlessly give FIV to defenceless kitties if the gene was never inserted! So we used a known marker that would show us if the gene was there.

    Good news, it's there right where we want it - we can see it because the kittens glow in the dark. Better still, they can pass it on to their offspring - no need to mess around with cloning! Best of all, some cells from these kitties are looking resistant to FIV. All of these steps give us hope that the kitties we have made will be resistant to FIV infection, and give us new insights into preventing FIV in other cats.
    I'm pretty much the opposite of concise. If I fail to get to the point, please ask me and I'm happy to (attempt to) clarify.

  3. - Top - End - #3
    Barbarian in the Playground
    Join Date
    Sep 2019
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    Florida
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    Default Re: The glow-in-the-dark kitty

    Also, I think the scientists are playing it down to look more professional, but the scientists are probably as excited about the glowing aspect as everyone else.
    The thing is the Azurites don't use a single color; they use a single hue. The use light blue, dark blue, black, white, glossy blue, off-white with a bluish tint. They sky's the limit, as long as it's blue.

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