Koreans produce $3m glow-in-the-dark dog It's been five long years since Taiwanese boffins brewed up a glow-in-the-dark pig, but one Reg reader's prayers* for the ultimate pet have finally appear to have been answered in the form of a fluorescent mutt. According to Reuters, a Seoul National University team led by Lee Byeong-chun has sucessfully bred a GM beagle …
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I still reckon that glow-in-the-dark seagulls is the way to go.
Release a few around Sellafield and there's gotta be at least 3m quids worth of ROFLMAO in the headlines, ensuing fracas and mass outbreak of self-righteous "We told you so"ing from the luddites that would inevitably cause.
Splice the gene into your favorite guard dog breed, and then put some UV lights around the building you want to protect.
A snarling German Shepherd is unnerving at the best of times, but when they're on the pursuit barking their brains out while glowing all eerie and eldritch - well, then you can tell the burglars by the colour of their pants.
That is, it absorbs UV radiation and immediately re-transmits the energy as visible light. So no, it doesn't glow on its own. 'Phosphorescence' is when something stores the energy and re-transmits it at a slower rate, which is what toy ghosts and things do.
Though it does mean that chemical activation/de-activation is a bit of a waste of time when you could just use the switch on a UV lamp to control it. But I think the point is the ability to do a controllable genetic splice.
Yes, the really great news is that they can insert a gene that can then be easily switched on or off. This ability is extremely valuable for research. They picked the fluorescence gene because it's really easy to see if it's working, but the fluorescence itself isn't the important bit.
They will soon be on sale over here for a few hundred quid.
Quickly followed by counterfeit Chinese versions which have just been washed with shampoo that shows up under ultraviolet light (or being Chines more likely infra red). Hang on a minute, how do we know this guy is the real McCoy? Didn' t some other Korean Phd cheat on his cloning test? I bet this dog has just been sprayed with the stuff that you find in washing powder that makes your whites look white under ultra violet light.
The perfect Ninja attack weapon. Give the killer mutt to your enemy and go off on a business trip while arranging to have said hound fed with the special doggy treats converting it into a lethal biological weapon.
Alternatively the perfect gift for parents who suspect their offspring have too short an attention span to cope with a pet. Once they get bored slip fido the antibiotic and instant drama, leading to the vet being the bad guy as "There's nothing we can do to save him."
OTOH perhaps he just meant this gives researchers a better tool to control *when* a disease is expressed in their experimental subjects and (perhaps *more* interestingly) if you "switch off" expression does the condition go away?
I suspect that like German Korean is quite precise but the translations can sound a bit brutal.
I never said we would let the politicians roam free. The added benefit of them glowing so bright is that they would be dangerous to little kids eyes. Therefore we need to thinking of the kids. We need to lock the politicians away, have them tagged chipped and registered (like cattle). All for the safety of the kids.
Up next make anyone who says think of the kids and comes up with some asinine to follow glow to . Oh and I'm sure you folks could harvest all of that glowing energy too.
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