Washington, Aug 13 (ANI): Researchers have created eight rabbits, which look just like any other white bunnies, but can glow in the dark, in a leap forward for developing medicine for life-threatening genetic diseases.
The transgenic bunnies were born last week at a university in Istanbul, Turkey. But the scientific process behind the glowing wonders started with mice at the University of Hawaii more than a decade ago, KHON2.com reported.
Biogenesis researcher Dr. Stefan Moisyadi said that these rabbits are like a light bulb glowing, like an LED light all over their body, and on top of it, their fur is beginning to grow and the greenness is shining right through their fur.
Moisyadi said that they live just as long as normal animals do.
"In mice, I can tell you that from mice, and they show no ill effects," he said.
To produce the glow, researchers injected fluorescent protein from jellyfish DNA into eight rabbit embryos in a lab. The embryos were then re-inserted into the mother rabbit and two were born with the "glowing gene."
Moisyadi said that the goal is to eventually produce larger transgenic animals including sheep, cows and even pigs.
He said that the benefits in doing it in large animals are to create bio-reactors that basically produce pharmaceuticals that can be made a lot cheaper.
Moisyadi said this research could also lead to cures for human illnesses caused by genetic deficiencies. (ANI)
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