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| Glowing Kittens! (image from discovermagazine.com) |
Well, it was only a matter of time before scientists "made" kittens that glow as well as puppies. These adorable little guys are being used to study feline HIV (which apparently can also infect monkeys). The virus was inserted into the eggs of the mother to see whether the kittens would be immune to feline HIV afterward. In order to tell if the virus actually made the transfer it was tagged (i.e. inserted into the virus) with a bioluminescent gene from jellyfish that would glow under a black light. The 'glow' was used to confirm that the virus indeed made it into the kittens, which is obviously a necessary control on the experiment. Isn't that ingenious? Oh science, you've done it again!
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