glow in the dark cat!

whip out your blu-ray laser and have some fun!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVdLJ78RBWk

Yeah, if you're against testing on animals, or genetic experiments, I probably wouldn't watch...

no kidding!

You know I honestly don't know why people are against genetic engineering. I have learned A LOT about it in my bio class last year and I will be learning about it some more this year. (Ok well last year I just had chemistry, but my teacher was new and only knew bio-chem lol :). The worst that could happen to said plant or animal is that it never lives long enough to well... live (or it doesn't work).

I can sorta understand it from a religious view because you could be "playing god". But in my world religions class we had a priest come in so we could ask him questions and one of my questions was what his opinion was on bioengineering. He said "Intellect is a gift from God to humans, so as long as they use it for a good purpose then they can use it however they want. Personally I think genetic engineering can solve many problems."

I detect 42.6% possibility of this thread turning nasty.

Hey, what a coincidence!

Guess what experiment I was just doing at university. It took 4 weeks but we made some bacteria glow fluorescent green Not as cool as cats, but still, nice to do some actual genetic engineering myself rather than just hearing about it on the news and stuff

Switch said:

I detect 42.6% possibility of this thread turning nasty.

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your stupid! 42.[highlight]7[/highlight]% you dummy! gosh, freaking idiot!    jk, lol

Now the real question is, seeing as cloning is expensive and bioengineering is also expensive, why would someone pay tens of thousands more for a glowing cat? They don't even glow that brightly!

Is there some purpose (beyond the laser world) that I'm missing here?

rocketparrotlet said:

Now the real question is, seeing as cloning is expensive and bioengineering is also expensive, why would someone pay tens of thousands more for a glowing cat?  They don't even glow that brightly!

Is there some purpose (beyond the laser world) that I'm missing here?

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They're not even gitd, they're just fluorescent.And only their skin glows, not their fur.So yea, why would anybody pay for a fluorescent cat?

Why would you waste 5 bilion dollars on a 27km long underground magnetic supercooled tunnel?

rocketparrotlet said:

Now the real question is, seeing as cloning is expensive and bioengineering is also expensive, why would someone pay tens of thousands more for a glowing cat?  They don't even glow that brightly!

Is there some purpose (beyond the laser world) that I'm missing here?

Click to expand...

If we can learn how to reliably insert genetic code into the gene, we can replace defective genetic code with good genetic code or change the genetic code of some creature so it can do a job for us (like making a microbe able to "eat" an oil spill).  Using "glowing" genes for the experiments lets us see very quickly if the technique for insertion worked or not and allows the non-scientist (read that "people who approve grants") to "see" that it worked.  It also doesn't hurt the animal to "glow" a bit as opposed to growing an extra set of legs to prove we did it.

Peace,
dave

daguin is perfectly correct.

I'm currently studying a Biotechnology degree at University and this stuff is right up my alley. We're doing these kinds of experiments in the lab (not as cool as cats though ).

Fluorescent markers are used to identify if something has worked, if the gene has been spliced in the genome. Most of my study involves bacteria, so we can plate out colonies and the glowing bacteria are the ones which have worked. In bacteria, we can also use an antibiotic marker as well.

This is part of selection. Biology is very unpredictable and you can never know if something works, so you need some way to distinguish what has worked and what hasn't. Sure, you could go to the end product, but it would be very costly to go all the way to the end product with a waste, so we need to select what is working early on.

Now, for me the most impressive think about this experiment is that they did it on a mammal. Bacteria is relatively easy because of the way they work. Plants are a little harder, but still okay. At the moment it is bacteria used to make stuff for us and genetically modified plants, but now in a similar way as plants we can get genetically modified animals, even humans.

Not resistant to a disease? Well, lets stick a gene in you that will make proteins that are. Not enough muscles? Lets throw in a gene that enhances muscle buildup. etc. Should be very interesting

Thanks, Daguin and Murudai for clearing this up. I understand the concept now; I hope that the bioengineering experiments, and eventually, actual organisms turn out as we hope in the future.

-Mark

If we shine a blueray at them will they flashes? (DONT POINT EYES PLS) & only 2mW blueray @max.

rocketparrotlet said:

Thanks, Daguin and Murudai for clearing this up.  I understand the concept now; I hope that the bioengineering experiments, and eventually, actual organisms turn out as we hope in the future.

-Mark

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The concept is basically research.In this field just like any other field.Just like researchers would spend 30.000 on a multiwatt dpss system just to proove a concept and then never use it again.