How long until they can do this and beyond in humans? Sure, this is done now in pigs via breeding, but you know cosmetic companies will go wild if this can be put into a pill to change existing skin color. Need we say more than Paris Hilton glow in the dark sex video? Imagine St. Pat’s day where college fraternities turn themselves green. As well as unsuspecting coeds. That doesn’t wear off. Speaking of which, what will white supremacist groups say when people start taking on any color, including black? Lot’s to ponder here.
Taiwan breeds green-glowing pigs
Scientists in Taiwan say they have bred three pigs that glow in the dark.
They claim that while other researchers have bred partly fluorescent pigs, theirs are the only pigs in the world which are green through and through.
The pigs are transgenic, created by adding genetic material from jellyfish into a normal pig embryo.
glow in the dark green Bacon, pork chops, and saussage just in time for St. Pattrick’s day!
And the purpose of this is?
Ok, St. Patrick’s Day. But anytime else I see green anything in my fridge out it goes. Well, except for certain veggies.
I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them Sam I Am!
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Designer pigs; maybe Paris Hilton will get one…
I teach middle school science and we use Bio Rad’s Bio Rad pGLO transformation kit, which students insert that same GFP gene (Green Fluorescence Protein) from a Jellyfish into some E. coli bacteria. The students love it, and I showed them the green pigs and they are pretty amazed. Some practical applications of the technology include using the GFP as a marker protein in research.
Am I the only one not at all pleased by this. Genes arnt like a chain where a link can be taken out and replaced with all the other links maintaining their function, its more like code where one change breaks any number of lines of code. Already we have corn that is resistant to bugs but cause alergies in humans. At what point to we create the super virus or deli meat that causes cancer by accident. Personaly im fine with my dark red ham, my pale orange salmon and my white chicken.
Bob, come on, you know you WANT to have the first green, glowing pig on the block.
WOOT!!!
Now I can eat green eggs and ham, sam-I-am…
You know, I’m straddling the fence here. Part of me wants to view this in scientific terms and think, “Not bad. we can manipulate living creatures to do things nature never intended.”
The other half is saying, “Woah! Slow down!”
Suppose we inject human genes into a pig (not too far fetched, we’ve done it with mice) and the pig becomes infected with some virus that was previously benign to humans. Suddenly we have a virus that can readily identify a human gene and mutate to be able to infect the cells that contain this gene at will.
Now, suppose that this pig, even though it is green, is mixed in with the other pigs on the farm and infects one of them with this mutated gene.
The farmer comes along and sees a sick pig so he takes it into the barn to nurse it back to health. While there, the farmer comes into contact with this virus that has mutated enough that it can now infect both the farmer and the pig.
Would we recognize this as an entirely new infectious agent?
Currently our flu strains are a mixture of bird/pig strains that, after many generations mutate so they can become infections to humans.
If we remove that barrier of human DNA to porcine DNA, suddenly it won’t take generations of viral trial and error to infect us…it will be as easy as walking next door to borrow a cup of death.
G
But when you genetically alter the Fox in a box…
Well say you have a bacteria/protozoa/etc. that attacks the say, cell membrane in a jelly fish. For some odd fluke, in changeing the cell color, the scientists change the cell membrane of the pig just enough that the thing affecting the jellies can jump ship and infect pigs. Ok, now we are going far but stick with me a bit more, the pig heart is amazingly simaler to a humans and for a second fluke, mutates to attack the heart and can then be passed to humans. I know, its a long shot that is 100% hypothetical but still… not yet, we are going to do somthing stupid (Government is going to make a super soldier, big bussines will patent a living organism, etc)
Also, Tallwookie’s post, specificly “WOOT” gave me a question… how long till real green ham shows up on woot… I see it as very plausible.
Do you think they could just make specific body parts glow in the dark?