Earlier this week, news from Japan reminded people that genetically or otherwise altered mice can be made unafraid of cats. An oddly resonant bit of news is out from S. Korea’s Gyeongsang Nat’l University. Scientists there have two, cloned cats that might unnerve even mighty mice. The felines – Turkish Angora – glow red in the dark (well, dark except for UV light). The two cats are clones of their mother, via nuclei from her skin cells, and thus are presumably genetically identical save for the addition of genes for red fluorescent dye.

The news accounts dwell mostly on the weirdness angle. There is little actual explanation of how to justify such an experiment beyond freakshow value. There is. to be sure, some mention of such work’s importance to studying genetic disease, and as showing off the team’s skill at cloning cats (which could be useful with endangered cat species). Even if clients and news editors clip it out, is it too much to ask that these wire stories add a bit more detail on just how such tagged genes are used as markers for following an introduced gene’s fate and expression, and on their potential, when hit by UV, to act as triggers for other genes to kick in with useful results? Oh well. It is, in fact, weird.

Accounts seem to depend largely, perhaps entirely on a story two days ago in the Korea Times, by Cho Jin-seo.
Derived Stories: AP, Reuters ; Telegraph (UK) Lucy Cockcroft ; AFP ; Korea.net ;

-CP

This entry was posted on Friday, December 14th, 2007 at 1:30 pm and is filed under Health & Medicine Stories, Science Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.