Frankenstein may be a work of fiction, but these experiments are real.
For decades, scientists have been tweaking the genes of animals to give them desirable (and sometimes just plain bizarre) traits. This is possible thanks to gene editing techniques that make it possible to easily cut and paste DNA.
Here are some of the weird and wacky experiments researchers have done on animals over the years. Could humans be next?
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Dolly the sheep
In 1996, British scientists created the first cloned sheep, named Dolly, by transferring the nucleus from an adult cell into an unfertilized premature egg whose nucleus had been removed, a process called nuclear transfer. Sadly, Dolly died of a lung disease at the age of six.
Glow-in-the-dark mice
And in 2002, scientists at Caltech created glow-in-the-dark mice by injecting single-celled mouse embryos with a virus that contained a jellyfish gene for green fluorescence. Researchers have since created glow-in-the-dark fish, cats, and other animals.
Image source: Ingrid Moen, Charlotte Jevne, Jian Wang, Karl-Henning Kalland, Martha Chekenya, Lars A Akslen, Linda Sleire, Per Ø Enger, Rolf K Reed, Anne M Øyan and Linda EB Stuhr: Gene expression in tumor cells and stroma in dsRed 4T1 tumors in eGFP-expressing mice with and without enhanced oxygenation. In: BMC Cancer. 2012, 12:21. doi:10.1186/1471-2407-12-21
Less farty cows
Some of these experiments serve a noble purpose. Researchers at the University of Alberta in Canada found the bacterium that produces methane, and in 2009, they created a line of cattle that produces 25% less of the smelly gas than the average cow. This is important because methane from cows is a major source of the greenhouse gases causing global warming.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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