Scientists Clone Fluorescent Cats {Switched.com}

Dec 13th 2007 12:50PM The purpose of making them fluorescent is not to be funny or cruel like the author of this article suggests. Firstly, under normal light say from an incandescent light bulb or in normal sunlight, the animals will not be emitting radiation like a Christmas tree. The fluorescent colors are only visible (yes, how could have logic guessed it) under a fluorescent bulb. Particular genes, extracted from other animal species which are naturally fluorescent (say from the ocean) are inserted into an animal cell. That cell will produce the corresponding protein which when exposed to a fluorescent light source will have its electrons excited so that the color will appear. Typical colors used for such tagging experiments are green (green fluorescent protein-GFP; perhaps you might want to spend 30-seconds of research), red, blue or occasionally yellow.

As for the connection between a disease and making animals express certain tagging proteins, well let me start by saying, you are not a biologist so don't imply something insidious about the research being done. You do not need to do a few years of laboratory research but merely a few minutes on wikipedia to look up what's the point of making certain cells glow. As I stated, it is done to tag cells. To understand how an organism, especially a mammalian one as complex as a cat develops cell by cell, tracing the mitotic pathway, it is an excellent tool to be able to trace what cell ends up where. In fact Nobel prizes have been won for doing exactly that in the Nematode (C. Elegans) model, tracing all the cells from its original stem source. It would take textbooks to explain all the different experiments that can be done by tagging cells (hence the reason why people go to Medical School and Graduate school for Ph.D.s; so as not to make sensationalist claims on an AOL News Source), so I won't go into it here.

Next time, do a little bit of research and don't come off as a simpleton.