http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2007/12/123_15447.html
Quote:
By Cho Jin-seo
Staff ReporterResearchers found a way to clone pet cats five years ago. Now they can play a trick on their genes to change their color.
A Gyeongsang National University team said they have succeeded in cloning cats after modifying a gene to change their skin color. Because of the red fluorescence protein in their skin cells, the three Turkish Angola kittens look reddish under ultraviolet light, the researchers said.
The red cloned cat research is expected to be utilized in dealing with certain genetic diseases in animals and humans. It will also help reproduce rare animals, such as tigers and wildcats, which are on the verge of extinction, the team said.
According to the team led by professor Kong Il-keun, three kittens were born in January and February by caesarian section, but one died during the procedure. They weighed between 110 and 136 grams at birth and now weigh 3.5 kilograms each now, the researchers said.
``We have proved our world-class ability in cloning animals that have modified characteristics,'' said Kong. ``We found that the red fluorescent protein in all the organs of the dead kitten, which means we have established an efficient way of cloning gene-modified cats.''
The first cloned cat, nicknamed Copycat, was born in 2002 at Texas A&M University. Many other animals such as cows, dogs, pigs, bulls and goats have been successfully cloned by a number of researchers in North America, Europe and South Korea.
Kong cloned a cat in 2004 for the first time in the country. He has since worked as director of research at a state-supported project to clone animals for therapeutic research.
To clone the Turkish Angola cats, Kong's team used skin cells of the mother cat. They modified its genes to make them fluorescent by using a virus, which was transplanted into the ova. The ova were then implanted into the womb of the donor cat.
Called reproductive cloning, the method has been mostly used in cloning animals that are genetically identical, until Kong's kittens were born with the tampered genes.
The technique differs from therapeutic cloning, which is to make a ``stem cell'' that can be guided to grow into a specific body part. Former Seoul National University professor Hwang Woo-suk used this method in his human stem cell cloning research, which was later found to have used fabricated data.
....
So let's say you're asleep one night and you wake up in bed half-naked to find this breathing heavy on your chest:
HELL NAW.
Dubs, you need to stop reading the Internet =(
AWWW If my cat glowed in the dark, I would love him more =D
Note that these cats don't actually glow in the dark, just when you shine UV light on them. Still awesome though. 
Either way, that would be a scary thing to see if one wakes up in the middle of the night. XD
Glow-in-the-dark cats? Whats next, Dog's slobber can be used to grow plants?
I would totally have my whole house blacklit just so I could always have my cat glow.
I can see it now... get your genes changed so you have fluorescent hair. The raves would be all over it.
>>Dude green hair W/O dye. All for it!
... I heard about this on the radio this morning.
All I can say is...
...
AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWE!!! CUTE WIDDLE KITTENS THAT GLOWWWW!!! I WANT ONE!!! =3
You're a strange and frightening little man, Luis Ramirez. 
I want one!!!!!
One thing cooler than my green fluorescent mice would be a fluorescent cat! Depending on the protein we could make them to order: yellow, green or red. Aren't they adorable?
At least I wouldn't step on Fluffy at night...
MRRRRRROW!!!!!
Are you guys sure this isn't some kind of a hoax? o.o
It can't be on the internet if it is'nt true. It's in the first amendment.
There's a LOT of things on the internet that aren't true though. You can't always trust internet sources.
In fact, that's why in college they had us using more books periodicals and whatnot as opposed to websites for research reports.
I really hope this is a hoax though. While I think a glow in the dark cat would be cool and all...it's just not natural.
It's true and it can be done. It's been done in other animals from bacteria to mice and pigs. We have the GFP mice in our animal facilities. Since I have no idea where my tutoring material is on my computer...I'm going to shamelessly use wikipedia. XD
Behold below: Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) can be inserted into a vector. The GFP-vector or plasmid can be inserted into bacteria or egg where it will recombine with the DNA of that cell. The protein will then be expressed causing the organism to glow in the dark. GFP does this because it can be excited at certain wavelengths, you guessed it it peaks at the green part of the spectrum.
Quote:
The green fluorescent protein (GFP) is a protein, comprised of 238 amino acids (26,9 kDa), originally isolated from the jellyfish Aequorea victoria / Aequorea aequorea / Aequorea forskalea that fluoresces green when exposed to blue light.[1][2] The GFP from A. victoria has a major excitation peak at a wavelength of 395 nm and a minor one at 475 nm. Its emission peak is at 509 nm which is in the lower green portion of the visible spectrum. The GFP from the sea pansy (Renilla reniformis) has a single major excitation peak at 498 nm. In cell and molecular biology, the GFP gene is frequently used as a reporter of expression.[3] In modified forms it has been used to make biosensors, and many animals have been created that express GFP as a proof-of-concept that a gene can be expressed throughout a given organism. The GFP gene can be introduced into organisms and maintained in their genome through breeding, or local injection with a viral vector can be used to introduce the gene. To date, many bacteria, yeast and other fungal cells, plant, fly, and mammalian cells have been created using GFP as a marker.
Why would we do this? It's easier to detect cells that express GFP under a microscope. In my lab, we use GFP-mice neuronal stem cells or even macrophages and inject them into normal non-GFP mice brains. We can track the GFP-tagged cells and differentiate them from the endogenous cells.
Quote:
The availability of GFP and its derivatives has thoroughly redefined fluorescence microscopy and the way it is used in cell biology and other biological disciplines.[16] While most small fluorescent molecules such as FITC (fluorescein isothiocyanate) are strongly phototoxic when used in live cells, fluorescent proteins such as GFP are usually much less harmful when illuminated in living cells. This has triggered the development of highly automated live cell fluorescence microscopy systems which can be used to observe cells over time expressing one or more proteins tagged with fluorescent proteins. Analysis of such time lapse movies has redefined the understanding of many biological processes including protein folding, protein transport, and RNA dynamics, which in the past had been studied using fixed (i.e. dead) material.
Another powerful use of GFP is to express the protein in small sets of specific cells. This allows researchers to optically detect specific types of cells in vitro (in a dish), or even in vivo (in the living organism).[17]
This is the pig stuff... It's easier to understand from wikipedia.
Quote:
Fluorescent green pigs were first bred by a group of researchers led by Wu Shinn-Chih at the Department of Animal Science and Technology at National Taiwan University, announcing the results of the experiment in January 2006.
The transgenic pigs were created by adding DNA encoding for the green fluorescent protein from fluorescent jellyfish to pig embryos which were then implanted in the utereus of female pigs. The pigs glow green in the dark, and have clearly green-tinged skin and eyes in daylight.
So yeah, this provides further evidence that Dubs' post is 100% accurate =P
Ack. Alright I believe you. But I was REALLY hoping this was a hoax. It just ain't right. >.>
It made most of the TV news networks here. Does anyone know how widely the story was reported in the US, if it's being mistaken for a hoax?
