Cloned cats glow red in the dark

The Daily Mail
Dec. 13, 2007

Cat's eyes are no longer the only things about them that glow in the dark, after scientists cloned a fluorescent feline.

South Korean Kong Il-Keun's team cloned cats after modifying a gene to change their skin colour.

The two Turkish Angora cats now glow red when exposed to ultraviolet light. The scientists believe the process could be used to develop treatments for human genetic diseases and could help reproduce rare animals.

To clone the cats, Kong's team used skin cells of the mother cat. They modified its genes to make them fluorescent by using a virus, which was transplanted into the ova. The ova were then implanted into the womb of the donor cat. Four kittens were born but two died during the caesarean section.

"This technology can be applied to clone animals suffering from the same diseases as humans," the leading scientist, Kong said.

"It will also help develop stemcell treatments," he said, noting that cats have 250 kinds of genetic diseases that affect humans as well.

South Korea's bio-engineering industry suffered a setback after a much-touted achievement by cloning expert Hwang Woo-Suk turned out to have been faked.

The government banned Hwang from research using human eggs after his claims that he created the first human stem cells through cloning were ruled to be bogus last year.