I'm not sure if this is an amazing scientific experiment, or a chilling glimpse into the future.

The goal of this little experiment conducted by a team of scientists from the University of Hawaii and the University of Istanbul was to see if altering an animal's genetic makeup before birth would cause the the animal's biological makeup to change with the hope it could lead to capability of producing cheaper medications for we humans in the future. In this case, it obviously did.

How did they do it? To put it as simply as possible, they took a fluorescent protein found in jellyfish DNA and injected it into eight rabbit embryos, then placed all eight into a mother rabbit. Then they waited for the miracle of life to run its course.

In normal light, all eight appear to be your normal, everyday , run-of-the-mill rabbits. Kill the lights, kick on a black light, and two of the eight emit the kind of green glow you see in movies and television that indicate something is radioactive.

The ultimate goal is to replicate the results on larger animals so they will "naturally" produce disease fighting proteins pharmaceutical companies can harvest and use in the production of medicine for you and me. They'll find out if that's possible when a sheep injected with the same jellyfish protein is born in November.

Associate professor at the Institute of Biogenesis Research, Dr. Stefen Moisyadi explained it a little better than I can in an interview with Medical News Today when he said,

Let's say for some patients who suffer from hemophilia and they need the blood clotting enzymes in their blood, we can make those enzymes a lot cheaper in animals with barrier reactives rather than a factory that will cost billions of dollars to build.

Maybe I watch too many science fiction movies, but am I the only one who can see's this leading to an "Attack of the Giant Glowing Rabbits"? Somebody get the SyFy Channel on the phone.



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