South Korean Scientists Create Glowing Dog 139
cultiv8 writes "A research team from Seoul National University (SNU) said the genetically modified female beagle has been found to glow fluorescent green under ultraviolet light if given a doxycycline antibiotic. The researchers, who completed a two-year test, said the ability to glow can be turned on or off by adding a drug to the dog's food. 'The creation of Tegon opens new horizons since the gene injected to make the dog glow can be substituted with genes that trigger fatal human diseases,' the news agency quoted lead researcher Lee Byeong-chun as saying. He said the dog was created using the somatic cell nuclear transfer technology that the university team used to make the world's first cloned dog, Snuppy, in 2005."
Re:All I can think of is the joke... (Score:2, Interesting)
I happen to have a journalist acquaintance who wrote a pretty good book [amazon.com] about dog cloning in Korea. I can tell you you're both right and wrong. You will see the adorable beagle mentioned in the post just below. What you won't see, and (just as you say) won't want to see are the many dogs sacrificed for the project. Although Seoul and other cities are home to pampered pets, dogs are also a livestock commodity in Korea, and if you want to do a bit of research, you won't have any trouble getting all the dogs you want, and nobody will particularly care where they go.
We could've easily produced the first cloned dog right here in the United States, and researchers in Texas knew that. They also knew, full well, that Americans wouldn't stand for what had to be done in order to accomplish the feat.
In any event, if you like dogs, "Dog, Inc." is a pretty good read.