I was expecting something like this out of North Korea instead of South Korea, but what the heck. Scientists in South Korea’s Seoul National University genetically modified a beagle to help aid in their quest to find a cure for Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and other human diseases. What they didn’t expect was for that beagle to glow green under ultraviolet light when certain types of drugs were added to the dog’s diet. In particular, a small serving of of a doxycycline antibiotic does the trick and the researchers can make the dog glow at will simply by adding a dose of the antibiotic into the puppy chow.
Tegon, the beagle, is actually a clone born in 2009 and was created with the same cloning process the world’s first cloned dog was made with. Since dogs and humans have quite a few illnesses in common, Tegon was created specifically in a controlled environment to study how different vaccines and antibiotics interact with such diseases in hopes that the knowledge gained from the research could be used in finding cures for equivalent human illnesses. Although much was learned for this study, I can’t help but think that “they spent $3 million to create a glow in the dark dog” will overshadow the research results completely when this is referenced in the future.
Source: Reuters
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