back to article 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 …

COMMENTS

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  1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    WTF?

    Should... stop... programming at night

    I misread as "3m glow-in-the-dark log."

    1. The Fuzzy Wotnot
      Happy

      Wel....

      Late night coding session, chewing on those Post-It notes in the office 'cos the shops are shut has got have some nasty side effects when they get through the system!

  2. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Bumpy Cat
      Happy

      Already happens ...

      Just eat enough kim chi (speaking from experience here!).

  3. OS
    Alert

    Screw that

    Gentlemen ! We must not allow... a glow in the dark dog gap !

    Screw austerity ! All the nation's resources must be committed to achieving parity with those shifty Koreans in glow in the dark tech.

    Onward to victory comrades !

  4. david 63

    Should make...

    ...eating dinner in dimly lit Korean restaurants much easier...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @david 63

      Although, I'd be slightly suspicious when the food glows...

      1. Bumpy Cat
        Happy

        Spicy

        Korean food glows from the sheer amount of chili they use ...

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Racial stereotype incoming...

    At last, when going for a midnight snack it will no longer matter if the bulb has gone in the fridge!

    1. Patrick R
      FAIL

      only if

      you your fridge also has an ultraviolet light and that one is still on.

  6. Jonathan White

    Title

    It seems like a lot of effort to go to just to make dramatisations of 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' a bit cheaper.

  7. TeeCee Gold badge
    Happy

    Sod the dogs.

    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.

    1. Evil Auditor Silver badge

      Re seagulls around Sellafield

      Aren't they glowing already?!

      (Now for something completely different. Let's have some of those in Japan...)

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Devil

    Dog is not as useful for disease research

    Pigs are much closer to humans in all departments except lungs. For the latter you need goats.

    So if the goal of this research is really research into diseases a fluorescent goat would have been most welcome.

  9. Jon Double Nice

    They should make one with

    just glow in the dark teeth. That'd really scare teh burglarz

  10. DP 1
    Trollface

    As a publisher of scientific material...

    I say pics or it didn't happen.

  11. Dave 32
    Paris Hilton

    Glow in the dark

    Obviously, this is just a first step towards creating glow-in-the-dark humans!

    Dave

  12. Steve X

    Fluorescent?

    But will it lase if you hit it with a sufficently bright flash? *That* would make a helluva guard dog.

    1. Peter Murphy
      Happy

      Don't need lasers to scare you.

      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.

  13. The elephant in the room
    Pint

    The Case of the Counterfeit Kebabs

    This will be handy for proving the provenance of the produce with a UV light.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    These Korean meatballs

    are the dog's bollocks!

  15. Lord Elpuss Silver badge
    Facepalm

    My head hurts

    Uhm... great an' all, but how can they say it "glows in the dark" when you have to expose the mutt to ultraviolet light before it glows?

    Shurely it's more 'reflective' than 'glowing'? Less catchy catchphrase, I do agree.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Boffin

      Technically it 'flouresces'.

      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.

      1. Filippo Silver badge

        title here

        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.

  16. Peter Simpson 1
    Coat

    Maybe a mistranslation

    The dog in question actually *grows* when bathed in UV light.

    // it's the one with the fluorescent lining, thanks

  17. Bluenose
    Angel

    Mass production will bring the price down

    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.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    The most important question is still unanswered...

    Does it taste like chicken?

  19. Oninoshiko

    I, for one,

    welcome our new glow-in-the-dark canine overloads.

  20. kain preacher

    hmmm

    Can we apply this to politicians , so they light up when they lie . The bigger the lie the brighter they get .

    1. FozzyBear

      That does have merit

      We could replace street lights with a soapbox and a politician. The only problem is around election time I’d suspect you would need welding goggles to ensure you aren’t blinded by the intensity of the light

  21. skeptical i
    Coat

    Doesn't doxycycline only work on Dachshunds?

    > boing! <

  22. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Happy

    "substituted with genes that trigger fatal human diseases"

    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.

  23. TeeCee Gold badge
    Joke

    "...doxycycline antibiotic..."

    Why don't they just use LSD to turn their dogs on like everyone else?

  24. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge
    Trollface

    Poo

    Does this dog's poo also glow?

    Money to be made!

  25. CockKnocker
    Go

    What about

    Growing me a labrador sized elephant. I want one!!!!

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    @kain preacher

    We'd all go blind, and I don't mean from masturbation.

  27. kain preacher

    Hey

    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.

  28. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

    Good news for Corby and Hull

    Can the glow-in-the-dark duck be far behind?

    http://scarygoround.com/sgr/ar.php?date=20020903

    (OK, Tim's invention was the phosphorescent waterfowl, and this dog is merely common-or-garden florescent, as has been noted above. But still we may hope!)

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