Scientists in China created 10 piglets that glow green under black fluorescent lights, using a technique developed by the University of Hawaii at Manoa School of Medicine.
Via Huffington Post:
A group of scientists from South China Agricultural University were able to do this by injecting fluorescent protein from jellyfish DNA into pig embryos, thus creating the green-glowing pigs.
This same technique was used to create the world’s first glow-in-the-dark bunnies in Turkey earlier this year, where they are currently working to produce similar results with fluorescent-glowing sheep.
Scientists, however, are not creating glowing farm animals for seasonal décor. The goal of the research is to have an efficient and cheap way of getting a beneficial gene into humans that could help treat many genetic disorders.
Dr. Stefan Moisyadi, a UH Manoa bioscientist with the Institute for Biological Research, says, for example, that this technique could benefit people who suffer with the rare blood-clotting disease hemophilia. “We can make [blood-clotting] enzymes a lot cheaper in animals rather than a factory that will cost millions of dollars to build,” Moisyadi said in a press release.
