Experts

Scientists Genetically Create Glow-In-the-Dark Rabbits

By Cheri Cheng | Update Date: Aug 13, 2013 09:40 AM EDT

In order to survive in the wild, animals have adapted different survival tactics. For animals that tend to be prey, such as rabbits, they have to rely on multiple ways of hiding from big and scary predators. For rabbits, the color of their fur coats could be the difference between life and death. However, in a new study, researchers took away the rabbits' natural defense to hide from their predators by genetically modifying them to glow-in-dark. Rabbits that light up in the dark might not be so lucky.  

"A LED light, and on top of it, their fur is beginning to grow and the greenness is shining through their fur, it is so intense," the Bio-genesis researcher, Dr. Stefan Moisyadi said according to the Guardian Express.

For this study, a research team composed of scientists from Hawaii and Turkey ventured into creating rabbits that would light up in the dark. They genetically modified an entire litter of bunnies, but only two out of the eight newborns appear to be glowing-in-the-dark.

"We put eight eggs, eight babies were born, two were transgenic. 25 percent efficiency. Not bad," Moisyadi said according to International Science Times.

The researchers were able to successfully light up these bunnies by tampering with the rabbits' natural genetic makeup. The scientists took a fluorescent protein from the jellyfish's DNA and then injected it into the embryos of the eight rabbits when they were outside of the mother rabbit's body. The fluorescent protein will not harm the rabbits' lifespan. The embryos were then implanted in the mother rabbit.

"It is just a marker to show that we can take a gene that was not originally in the animal and now exists in the animal," Moisyadi explained. "The green is only a marker to show that it is working easily."

The researchers have also performed similar experiments with larger animals, such as kittens, puppies and monkeys. The researchers are now interested in working with larger animals to determine if this modification would help with creating effective medications.

The bunnies were born in Istanbul, Turkey. 

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