In 2008, scientists from the Audubon Nature Institute in New Orleans, LA, made headlines when they played god and engineered an orange tabby cat to glow in the dark with a neon green shine. The purpose for the cute nightlights was to positively confirm a successful gene implantation.
Today the fluorescent kitties shined into the news again as team from Mayo Clinic have made another breakthrough using the glow in the dark technique. Believe it or not, there is a killer out there that is very similar to one that stalks humans. AIDS. Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV), causes AIDs, and is slowly growing more and more a problem for cats across the world.
What Mayo Clinic has done is they have found a way to engineer cats to produce a protein that helps their bodies resist the FIV. By inserting a monkey gene into feline eggs before they are fertilized, the cats can grow up and possibly pass the protein production down to their kittens.
It seems the night light technique was used to help show if the gene engineering worked in the cats. A jellyfish gene is what gives the cats the radiated glow of a mutant, which is pretty much what they are, but cutter.
So why are people messing with the chemical design of cats and turning them green and making them more like monkeys and jellyfish? Glad you asked. See, humans and cats have a very similar gene structure when it comes to immunity and cells. HIV and FIV are both terribly good at depleting the body’s immune system, and preventing immune cells from fighting off infection. So in finding what we have about the protective genes that are possible to place in cat’s shows that not only can we maybe walk around glowing green, but we could have a way to prevent HIV/AIDS.
To see if the resistance works is to be seen I guess, but scientist feel they are closer than ever to preventing the deficiency.
“We haven’t shown cats that are AIDS proof,” says Eric Poeschla, a molecular biologist and infectious disease specialist at Mayo Clinic, “We still have to do infection studies involving whole cats. That the protection gene is expressed in the cat lymphoid organs, where AIDS virus spread and cell death mostly play out, is encouraging to us, however.”
So There you have it folks, they’re not for sale, yet. With this new technology I wouldn’t be surprised if people started looking over the idea of helping stop AIDS, and just want to get shot up with jellyfish glow genes.
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