Puppies That Glow In The Dark

How far science can go has been proven one more time. After they had created the first cloned puppy called Snuppy back in 2005, a team led by Byeong-Chun Lee of Seoul National University in South Korea, made a group of five more cloned dogs that – glow in the dark. They are “genetically engineered to produce a fluorescent protein" and when put under an ultraviolet light, they glare red. The team hopes that the dogs will help them study human diseases.

Their new possible project of creating puppies with human diseases has left many scientists – distraught. They claim that there are already dogs being used as disease models, such as narcolepsy, blindness and some kinds of cancer. But the team is determined: “The next step for us is to generate a true disease model”, said the team leader.

Aside the dogs serving as models for diseases, the team hopes to create puppies with oestrogen receptor removed. This way they wish to find out the influence of that hormone on fertility. The pregnancy project they did wasn’t efficient – they only had seven successful pregnancies from 344 embryos they specially cloned and implanted in 20 dogs. “Some of the five surviving dogs were now producing their own red-glowing puppies”, said Mr Lee. Still, many scientists don’t approve projects like these.