Chinese scientists at Northeast Agricultural University cloned a pig and altered its genes to make the animal glow fluorescent green. The scientists now report that the pig has passed the “green genes” on to its offspring.
(To clarify: the pig and piglets don’t glow all the time–under fluorescent lights they glow from the snout, “trotters,” and “tongue.”)
This is newsworthy because it’s evidently the first time, or one of the first instances of, a genetically altered animal successfully passing on the altered genes to its young.
The larger hope is that if we can genetically engineer pigs to glow green, we can also manipulate their DNA to grow organs suitable for human transplant.
The research hasn’t been published, so other scientists haven’t had a chance to evaluate the experiment. And it may turn out that going from glowing cells to growing human organs in pigs is a leap that we’re not ready to make any time in the near future.
But the idea is intriguing.
Source: National Geographic
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