Chinese Scientists Create Green Glow-in-the-Dark Piglets

Researchers at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa's John A. Burns School of Medicine have created 10 green-tinted piglets that have been genetically altered to glow in the dark.

According to the researchers Zhenfang Wu and Zicong Li of South China Agricultural University, they used a method that quadruples the success rate of the transfer of plasmids from jellyfish DNA into the embryo of the pigs. Through this, the plasmid-independent deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) creates the ability to replicate a fluorescent protein from jellyfish DNA.

Dr. Stefan Moisyadi of the University of Hawaii explains the study further. "It's just a marker to show that we can take a gene that was not originally present in the animal and now exists in it," he said, via a press release.

He adds that the green color of florescent hereditary material infused into the pig's developing lives has now been fused into the creatures genetic make-up.

"For patients who suffer from hemophilia and they need the blood-clotting enzymes in their blood, we can make those enzymes a lot cheaper in animals rather than a factory that will cost millions of dollars to build," said Dr. Moisyadi, via a the release.

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More information regarding the study can be found via the journal Biology of Reproduction.