Ruppy (ruby puppy) is one of five transgenic, which means their genetic code has been deliberately modified rather than mutating naturally beagles that all produce a fluorescent protein that glows red under UV light, created by cloning fibroblast cells that express the red fluorescent gene produced by sea anemones.
A team led by Byeong-Chun Lee of Seoul National University in South Korea created the puppies. They did this by infecting the dog fibroblast cells with a virus that inserts the fluorescent gene into a cell’s nucleus which was then transferred into another dog’s cell(with the nucleus removed). It was then left to divide in a Petri dish for a few hours and then the cloned embryo was implanted into a surrogated mother.
The major challenges in creating these transgenic dogs were the low efficiency of cloning and controlling where in the nuclear DNA the foreign gene lands. Using a retrovirus to transfer the fluorescent gene to dog fibroblast cells had its negatives as where the virus inserted the gene could not be controlled with only 1.7 percent of the 344 embryos coming to term. But five dogs are alive, healthy and starting to spawn their own fluorescent puppies.
“This means we'll be able to switch genes in dogs for genes related to human diseases such as Parkinson's Disease for research” (http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article /ALeqM5gHJaNaaFfES6oXFDq_KLTFGCDY) This experiment for transgenic dogs will aid scientists in the process of creating models of human disease in the future as dogs suffer from 244 diseases that are also seen in humans.
References
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gHJaNaaFfES6oXFDq_KLTFGCDYtA
Tegan Parker
p11
Friday
Clare Rudkins
