I wonder if this could be used in future to effectively tag sheep. Yes officer, those are my sheep he rustled (shines torch).
Science of the lambs: Boffins grow GLOW-IN-THE-DARK sheep
Shepherds who watch their flocks by night could soon have a much easier job: South American scientists have successfully reared fluorescent sheep. Boffins at the Animal Reproduction Institute of Uruguay implanted a glow-in-the-dark gene from the Aequorea victoria jellyfish into nine of the woolly animals. The bright-minded …
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Monday 29th April 2013 12:56 GMT Don Jefe
Probably not. All the 'glo-animals' are validation of experimental modification techniques; glowing is not the goal itself. The idea is that if the animal does is fact glow then the new genetic material has successfully been introduced into the gonads & future generations will pass along the material. If they glow then you can begin introducing other non-visible modifications with the confidence the changes will carry on.
On a side note, my wife is Uruguayan and we are going to visit in July. I'm going to try & visit the lab and get some pics with the sheep while we are there. My brother-in-law is involved in the project so I think I can get it done.
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Monday 29th April 2013 18:42 GMT diodesign
Re: Re: +1
"The thought of the El Reg hacks sitting in the pub/office thinking up lines like this makes my day."
:-) It's sorta like the way the New York Post is portrayed in this vid.
C.
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Monday 29th April 2013 14:24 GMT Ru
Re: So wait
Just the skin, as far as I'm aware. You may recall a recent brouhaha over glowing bunnies... the real thing woudl have glowing skin but not fur, and the pictures of the supposed glowing bunnies showed an even all-over glow. Have a look at the (hopefully) relevant wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_fluorescent_protein.
I'm assuming that the protein is either not expressed by follicle cells, or is not stable over the long term so any fluorescence in hair would only appear at the very base, and older parts of the hair would appear boring and normal.
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Monday 29th April 2013 20:27 GMT 100113.1537
Re: So wait
It is hard for the GFP protein to take the correct fluorescent structure when it is not inside the cell so I don't think you can do fluoro-wool using this method. You can see on the piccies that the green only shows up in skin where there is little wool.
It's a great marker protein to look at control of gene expression 'cos you don't need any other chemicals to see where it is and it pretty much stays in the cell where it is expressed. You can get other modifications that emit different colours (blues and reds), but I don't think anyone has that good control over gene expression to make pretty pictures with them all - yet....
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Monday 29th April 2013 14:15 GMT Bigus1234
Saving the extras.
Now they have changed the colour, if they can make them taste a little minty then we have "Ready Mint Sauced Lambs" - how about that for a cash saver (just don't mention the additional chemicals or higher chance of food poisioning).
Also, this ensures you are getting lamb and not horse. Not a good thing for Findus but good for the customers :-)