Today we’re taking a look at some good old fashioned mad science. While there are actually serious research questions being examined in these studies, it doesn’t change the fact that there have been multiple studies where scientists went out and created glow in the dark animals.
Green Fluorescent Protein
IN 2008, Green Fluorescent Protein was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. This prompted a resounding “Huh” from my chemistry research group as it seemed pretty clearly biology to us. Then again, winning the Nobel isn’t the best way to get chemists to remember you anyway.
While there is much question about whether it’s chemistry, there is no doubt that GFP is a really cool and useful protein. It can be found in many marine creatures, but was first isolated from a jellyfish. A glowing jellyfish.
The major use of GFP is that it is that it is pretty obvious whether your genetic modification technique has worked when you demonstrate it by introducing a gene that makes things glow bright green. Once that little bit of mad science is done and you have your glow in the dark animals, you can go on to use it for actual useful genetics work. Which may or may not lead to funny gene names.
Dogs
This one was an exercise in demonstrating that the genetic modifications could be activated and deactivated. There are many diseases that are linked to gene expression instead of just a gene being present. And as usual, glowing is a pretty obvious modification that turns on and off.
The subject this time? A beagle. Since the actually interesting genes don’t have a clear trigger, in this case they engineered the gene to only produce the protein when Tegon had doxycycline in her body. Which is certainly an alternative to noticing the presence of doxycycline by the horrible stomach symptoms.
Fish
With that proof of concept, it was only a matter of time before the same technique was used to activate the glow gene in the presence of something people actually wanted to study. Endocrine disruptors in water are a serious problem, but it’s not always clear what exactly they’re doing. We know one of the effect is that their resemblance to female hormones is actually causing fish to skew female.
And again, the solution was making fish glow. By inserting the GFP gene into zebrafish, scientists are able to follow where exactly the disruptors are accumulating in the body. Finding out what exactly these chemicals are doing isn’t a solution to their presence, but it gives us a better picture of what’s happening.
Kittens
Opposite of fun fact: Cats are also able to develop AIDS symptoms. The Feline Immunodeficiency Virus behaves very similarly to HIV. This means that cats are potentially a useful model for human AIDS. It also means… kitty AIDS is a serious problem.
One interesting area for treating AIDS is gene therapy, inserting genetic code from rhesus monkeys that appears to imbue resistance to AIDS. But before scientists can try that out, they have to prove they can insert genes at all and get viable kittens.
Turns out glow in the dark kittens? Super cute.
Since there was already an existing body of work on getting GFP to activate in the presence of something else, Wongsrikeoa et. al. went ahead with the anti-FIV modifications. And since the cells with that protein now glow under UV light, it’s going to be a lot easier to know how to focus their studies.
Marmosets
I bet you always wanted a glowing monkey. And scientists working in the field of gene engineering always wanted proof that modifications could be passed on to a second generation in primates. Mice are a lot easier to genetically modify, but they often make poor models for human diseases. Which is exactly what Sasaki et al were able to accomplish with their marmosets.
The first glowing marmosets actually go back to 2001, but there had been considerable reproductive challenges that took until 2009 to overcome. Including the female marmosets just not being that into the fluoresent male. Clearly they’ve been attending the wrong parties.