Glowing Mice From China And Other Oddities

Glowing Mice From China And Other Oddities 

Matthew Herper

09,12,05

http://www.forbes.com/2005/09/09/mice-gene-therapies-cx_mh_0912genes.html

A man Tian Xu a Howard Hughes medical investigator at yale. He has made glowing mice. He has figured out how to make the mice glow a red color. To make the mice glow they inserted a gene taken from coral and inserted it into the mouses genome (Biological Info). The scientist have done other tests on Crayola box of colors, using jelly fish and fire flies glowing genes. Xu says that he has a trick, its call the transposon. Its a jumping gene, he stole it from the genome of a cabbage looper moth. Now all he has to do is learn how to understand it and read it. Transposon was first discovered 50 years ago in corn by Barbara McClintock. 

To me this discovery was really interesting, because if we can make mice glow. WHat would it be like if we could soon make humans glow. Your walking down the street and you see this little girl glowing. That would be amazing. If we could glow then we wouldn't need flash light anymore. Because we have our own flash light with in us. This discovery should soon be put to more living things other then mice, when they learn how to control it and how to insert it into other living things.