Cloned dogs to help find dementia cure
Scientists in South Korea have created a fluorescent dog, called Tegon, using cloning techniques, which they claim could one day help cure human diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
Scientists in South Korea have created a fluorescent dog, called Tegon, using cloning techniques, which they claim could one day help cure human diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
The cute Beagle – who was cloned using the same cell technology to create what scientists claimed was the world’s first cloned dog called Snuppy in 2005 – appears bright green under ultraviolet light when antibiotic drugs are put in her food.
Scientists started cloning glow-in-the-dark puppies two years ago by inserting genes from other species that produce fluorescent proteins, such as jellyfish and coral. However, Tegon’s ability to glow can also be turned on or off depending on whether the antibiotic is added to her food.
It allegedly took about 2,000 eggs to make some 1,000 embryos – all of which produced only one dog – that being Snuppy. While Tegon is not the first cloned dog, according to experts she is one of the first cloned dogs with the ability to ‘glow’.
“The creation of Tegon opens new horizons since the gene injected to make the dog glow can be substituted with genes that trigger fatal human diseases,” lead scientist, Lee Byeong-chun of Seoul National University, says.
Dogs were chosen for the $3 million project because they share 268 illnesses in common with humans, according to the journal Genesis. Scientists say dogs have already been used as models for narcolepsy, certain cancers and blindness.
Researchers cloned cells that express a red fluorescent gene produced by sea anemones, a group of water-dwelling, predatory animals. They then infected the nucleus of some dog cells with a virus that had the fluorescent gene in it; putting that nucleus in a dog’s egg cell and implanting the embryo into a female dog.
Has research gone too far? What are your thoughts on injecting cloned dogs with genes found in diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s? Let us know by commenting in the box below.
