Pyrian on 14/12/2007 at 05:53

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This sort of thing can actually vary a lot; there are a number of different procedures. To establish a breeding population, you need at some point to have an embryo with the knocked-in gene, so an early embryo is a popular target. You can't reliably knock-in a gene to every cell of an adult specimen, but you can potentially hit enough hair stem cells to make the same effect. The trait won't normally be heritable in that case, but they cloned the skin cells, so I'm guessing that was the vector they used. I'm not entirely sure why; it almost seems like they just wanted to do cloning with gene alteration and mixed the techniques.

HybridVision on 15/12/2007 at 01:04

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Wake me up when they finally make man-bear-pig.

I also want to point out that making animals glow in the dark is not new. They've done it with rabbits and pigs already, and also tobacco plants. I guess in the scientific community, making things glow never gets old ;)

Pyrian on 15/12/2007 at 02:12

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It's really very useful. Anything that can be tested simply by the presence or absence of flourescence can save a lot of time and money. Journalists tend to jump on "lol glowcats" but that's usually just a first step. Meanwhile, to determine the presence or absence of a marked gene, instead of sending a biopsy off for genetic testing you can just stick the animal under a blacklight (which comes standard with flowhoods) and look for yourself.