Why scientists are doing fluorescent pets?

Q: What is going on? Why scientists are taking our dogs, rabbits, pigs, fishes and now even cats and after some buzz manipulations they transform them into scary fluorescent beasts? What is the point in making the cat to glow?

A: If a laboratory animal glows, it is proof that a genetic manipulation has been done. Our genome (our DNA) is too small to hold it down with mini-forceps and to model it like nakiplast: if a scientists wants to modify a genome, he will use more indirect methods requiring at the end some proof that the DNA has been actually changed. The set of methodologies generally called 'transgenesis' refers to the modification of the genome by insertion of a new gene that normally gives to the host genome a new function. Since most transgenic techniques are species-specific - if a technique works for rats maybe does not works for frogs -  scientists are urged do develop new transgenic techniques to study the major number of species* from a genomic point of view. Usually, for the proof of actual transgenesis, scientists are introducing first a 'proof' gene, aka a 'reporter gene' like the one that gives to the animal all the instructions to build the green fluorescent protein. Therefore, if your cat glows in the dark, it is because in its genome there is a new gene, the GFP one.

Transgenic fluorescent kitty

A fluorescent pet, like the one in the picture published today by Dr Poeschla in Nature Methods, is the proof of concept that a new transgenesis technique works for cats. In addition, because GFP is visible at the exterior of the animal and because it is possible now to couple the expression of a reporter gene with any other 'molecular gear' reporting any physiological activity, this technological advance is the promise that in future biomedical research will be conducted from an exterior point of view, without the need to kill the laboratory animal. Today, this is only a promise, and it will probably require decades, because in science every step need a 'proof', but it's where I'm playing hard to get it done.

In the while, we will still write and read these 'bypass' declarations in the reported research.

Three male and two female transgenic cats, named TgCat1–5, were born by spontaneous vaginal deliveries at term and all five were transgenic. TgCat1 (male), TgCat2 (male) and TgCat3 (female) survived, whereas the fourth and fifth cats died perinatally from obstetrical complications. [...] TgCat4 was born after an uncomplicated singleton pregnancy at a normal gestation time (65 d). It was morphologically normal but died during or shortly after parturition from an apparent obstetrical accident involving aspiration, although a precise cause could not be determined at autopsy. This cat provided the opportunity to study all tissues. [...] and immunoblotting revealed abundant GFP expression in all tissues tested: brain, spinal cord, heart, spleen, skin, muscle, liver, kidney, small intestine and stomach.

-------/  Original citation:  /-----------------
Pimprapar Wongsrikeao, Dyana Saenz, Tommy Rinkoski, Takeshige Otoi and Eric Poeschla
Antiviral restriction factor transgenesis in the domestic cat
Nature Methods (2011) doi:10.1038/nmeth.1703

* we need to study the major number of species because different animals have different similarities to human biology: for instance our brain is more similar to the brain of a cat than the mouse brain.