Spike William is our new kitten and he was born January 30th, 2013.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Glow in the Dark Cats???

I saw this today on the Yahoo Home Page.
The cats are cute but this is
pretty weird, I think...

SEOUL (AFP) - South Korean scientists have cloned cats by manipulating a fluorescent protein gene, a procedure which could help develop treatments for human genetic diseases, officials said Wednesday. In a side-effect, the cloned cats glow in the dark when exposed to ultraviolet beams.

A team of scientists led by Kong Il-keun, a cloning expert at Gyeongsang National University, produced three cats possessing altered fluorescence protein (RFP) genes, the Ministry of Science and Technology said.

"It marked the first time in the world that cats with RFP genes have been cloned," the ministry said in a statement.

"The ability to produce cloned cats with the manipulated genes is significant as it could be used for developing treatments for genetic diseases and for reproducing model (cloned) animals suffering from the same diseases as humans," it added.

2 comments:

Gemini and Ichiro said...

I would hate to glow in the dark. Then I'd really get locked out of the treatment room.

Do you suppose they will have glow in the dark humans eventually?

Mickey's Musings said...

But why RFP genes? I don't want to glow!!
This is silly ;)
Purrs