These glowing pigs in the dark aren't the first to glow for the sake of science, but that doesn't mean they are any less incredible.
The pics were injected with jellyfish DNA when they were tiny embryos for the sole purpose of seeing whether they would glow or not. But that's not all. It was to see if there was any future human application.
According to Dr. Stefan Moisyadi, a veteran bioscientist with the Institute for Biogenesis Research:
It's just a marker to show that we can take a gene that was not originally present in the animal and now exists in it. The green is only a marker to show that it's working easily.
The research suggests that it is possible to manipulate biological development by introducing genes at an embryonic level, which could pave the way for genetic engineering to create cheaper and more efficient medicines. Dr. Moisyadi
explains:
[For] patients who suffer from hemophilia and they need the blood-clotting enzymes in their blood, we can make those enzymes a lot cheaper in animals rather than a factory that will cost millions of dollars to build.
The same team that created the glowing bunnies is also now set to introducing the results of their work on a glowing sheep in 2014. Check out the video below: [
University of Hawaii via
Impact Lab]