I'm thinking about the crime and security problem here in S Africa...

All I need is ultra violet 'black lights' all around the outside of the
house and a few of these dogs ;-)

Nic 57/15

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 12:50 PM, <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> handy for walks after dark but are their "deposits" flourescent ? :)
>
> Quoting rayilynlee <[log in to unmask]>:
>
> > Fluorescent puppy is world's first transgenic dog
> >   a.. 12:00 23 April 2009 by Ewen Callaway
> >   b.. For similar stories, visit the GM Organisms and Genetics Topic
> Guides
> > A cloned beagle named Ruppy - short for Ruby Puppy - is the world's first
> > transgenic dog. She and four other beagles all produce a fluorescent
> protein
> > that glows red under ultraviolet light.
> >
> > A team led by Byeong-Chun Lee of Seoul National University in South Korea
> > created the dogs by cloning fibroblast cells that express a red
> fluorescent
> > gene produced by sea anemones.
> >
> > Lee and stem cell researcher Woo Suk Hwang were part of a team that
> created
> > the first cloned dog, Snuppy, in 2005. Much of Hwang's work on human
> cells
> > turned out to be fraudulent, but Snuppy was not, an investigation later
> > concluded.
> >
> > This new proof-of-principle experiment should open the door for
> transgenic
> > dog models of human disease, says team member CheMyong Ko of the
> University
> > of Kentucky in Lexington. "The next step for us is to generate a true
> disease
> > model," he says.
> >
> > However, other researchers who study domestic dogs as stand-ins for human
> > disease are less certain that transgenic dogs will become widespread in
> > research.
> >
> > Dogs already serve as models for diseases such as narcolepsy, certain
> cancers
> > and blindness. And a dog genome sequence has made the animals an even
> more
> > useful model by quickening the search for disease-causing genes. Most dog
> > genetics researchers limit their work to gene scans of DNA collected from
> > hundreds of pet owners.
> >
> > Making a glowing dog
> > Lee's team created Ruppy by first infecting dog fibroblast cells with a
> virus
> > that inserted the fluorescent gene into a cell's nucleus. They then
> > transferred the fibroblast's nucleus to another dog's egg cell, with its
> > nucleus removed. After a week dividing in a Petri dish, researchers
> implanted
> > the cloned embryo into a surrogate mother.
> >
> > Starting with 344 embryos implanted into 20 dogs, Lee's team ended up
> with
> > seven pregnancies. One fetus died about half way through term, while an
> > 11-week-old puppy died of pneumonia after its mother accidentally bit its
> > chest. Five dogs are alive, healthy and starting to spawn their own
> > fluorescent puppies, Ko says.
> >
> > Besides the low efficiency of cloning - just 1.7 per cent of embryos came
> to
> > term - another challenge to creating transgenic dogs is controlling where
> in
> > the nuclear DNA a foreign gene lands. Lee's team used a retrovirus to
> > transfer the fluorescent gene to dog fibroblast cells, but they could not
> > control where the virus inserted the gene.
> >
> > This would seem to prevent researchers from making dog "knockouts"
> lacking a
> > specific gene or engineering dogs that produce mutant forms of a gene.
> These
> > knockout procedures are now commonly done in mice and rats, and three
> > researchers earned a Nobel prize in 2007 for developing this method,
> called
> > "gene targeting".
> >
> > No bright future?
> > Ko is working to adapt a procedure used so far in pigs, cows and other
> > animals to target genes in cloned dogs. His lab hopes to knock out a
> specific
> > oestrogen receptor in dogs to understand the hormone's effects on
> fertility.
> >
> > The long lifespan of dogs and their reproductive cycle could make them
> more
> > relevant to human fertility than mice, he says. "I think these dogs will
> be a
> > very useful model for our research."
> >
> > Greg Barsh, a geneticist at Stanford University who studies dogs as
> models of
> > human disease, says creating a transgenic dog is "an important
> > accomplishment", showing that cloning and transgenesis can be applied to
> a
> > wide range of mammals.
> >
> > "I do not know of specific situations where the ability to produce
> transgenic
> > dogs represents an immediate experimental opportunity," Barsh adds. But
> > transgenic dogs will give researchers another potential tool to
> understand
> > disease.
> >
> > However, Nathan Sutter, a geneticist specialising in dogs at Cornell
> > University in Ithaca, New York, says "transgenesis is labourious,
> expensive
> > and slow".
> >
> > Add the expense of caring for laboratory-reared dogs and negative public
> > perceptions and it could mean few researchers turn to transgenic dogs
> like
> > Ruppy, he says: "it's not on my horizon as a dog geneticist at all."
> >
> > Journal reference: genesis (DOI: 10.1002/dvg.20504)
> >
> > If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in
> print or
> > online, please contact the syndication department first for permission.
> New
> > Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of
> licensing
> > options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright
> to.
> >
> > Rayilyn Brown
> > Director AZNPF
> > Arizona Chapter National Parkinson Foundation
> > [log in to unmask]
> >
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