Adam Brittain

English 4

Mrs. Harris

2 May 2017

The realm of science has always brought up controversy in world no matter the topic. One of

the most heated debates yet most successful in science at the moment is the experiment on glow in the

dark animals. The pioneers of this research were even awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2008.

What researchers are trying to accomplish with this is how regular cells in the body react with foreign,

yet engineered cells and help how to alter genes. Labs around the world have been injecting numerous

animal species with certain proteins to give them a luminous glow under certain lights. This paper will

discuss how scientist genetically altered a fish, pig, and dog to further research various diseases.

A genetically engineered fish that is glowing green is helping scientist identify pollutants in the

body and what they are doing. The focus of this is to locate endocrine disruptors which can be found in

a wide range of products. They can copy the actions of sexual hormones which can result in

reproductive problems in humans and animals. However, scientists have had trouble figuring out what

endocrine disruptors do inside a person or an animal's body. That's what made a team genetically

engineer zebrafish to glow in places where an endocrine-disrupting chemical is present. This would in

turn show where it is harming the body and possibly lead to explain how. They have basically put new

genetic material in the fish embryos to identify where and when the chemicals enter the body and what

they do. This makes proteins which don't actually interfere with the way these chemicals act in the

body, but they glow green under a fluorescent microscope, providing a way to identify which body

tissues are being affected.

Chinese scientists have created the world's first glow in the dark pigs that gives off a fluorescent

green light. The piglets were able to glow after their embryos were injected with DNA from a jellyfish.

Experts claim that the animals should live normally and that the findings could help develop cheaper
drugs for humans. The ultimate goal of the research is to introduce beneficial genes into larger animals

to create cheaper and more efficient medicines. For example, patients who suffer from hemophilia and

need blood-clotting enzymes in their blood, they can make those enzymes a lot cheaper in animals

rather than a factory, which would be extremely expensive. The Institute for Biogenesis Research at the

John A. Burns School of Medicine says it aims to continue to improve human gene research in other

animal fertilization techniques. What they can basically do is inject a pig with an enzyme as an embryo

that a human needs and then take it out and figure out a way to make it into a sort of remedy for the

human patient.

Scientists at Seoul National University in 2009 produced the world's first transgenic dogs by

remaking fibrolast cells that produce a red fluorescent protein. The five dogs glow in the dark or under

a particular ultraviolet light and they all gave birth to glowing offspring who obviously shared this

gene. In 2011, a group of researchers at the same university then bred a dog in which the glowing could

be controlled, so the scientist could turn it on and off. Scientists said the study will help them to

understand genes that cause deadly human diseases, especially given that humans and dogs share 268

illnesses. What this could do in the future is allow scientists to clone a cancer cell or the strand of DNA

that carries the cancerous gene and inject it into a test subject and figure out how to turn it essentially

on and off.

Science has come a long way since the dawn of mankind. Who would have ever thought that

making an animal glow in the dark could help make medicines cheaper, better understand diseases, or

even find cures for the. It may be controversial to experiment on animals, but in the long run it might

be necessary to help save millions of lives. Ever since the first breakthrough in this research countless

other facilities have joined the cause and are trying new ways to illuminate the body to understand how

certain things effect it and develop ways to fix them or stop them all together. Who knows, maybe

human trials could be underway soon and the door to untapped medical mysteries could be finally

unlocked.