Glow in the Dark Rabbit

Glow in the dark rabbits may sound like a new addition to the Sherlock Holmes reboots or an acid trip, but they’re a real thing. Scientists at the University of Hawaii and a team in Turkey have bred two glowing green bunnies by injecting jellyfish genes into the embryos. The animals look normal in regular lighting but glow brightly under black light. Their glow, which comes from a fluorescent protein called luciferase, is visible to anyone who shines a light on them. This isn’t the first time a researcher has successfully made an animal glow in the dark, but the bunnies are the first to be born from this particular technique called transgenesis.

Transgenic organisms are any living creature that has had its DNA altered in some way, either by accident or on purpose. The glow-in-the-dark bunnies are a demonstration of the technology, which scientists could use to introduce beneficial genes into other animals to treat genetic diseases.

When light shines on the bunnies, luciferase catches on, and their bodies emit small amounts of blue light. They don’t glow as brightly as a firefly or even as much as a human cell, but they do have the potential to serve as a kind of glowing biomarker to indicate where harmful chemicals are in the body. Scientists have used the same technology to engineer zebrafish that glow when they come into contact with endocrine-disrupting chemicals. These animals can then be tracked as they move through the water, allowing researchers to monitor their movements and behavior.

Scientists have also inserted the fluorescent gene into cattle, pigs, dogs, cats, and other animals for research purposes, but these glowing rabbits are the first to be born as a result of the technique. Researchers aren’t producing them to sell in pet stores, but rather as a proof of concept that the techniques they have been using to transfer genes between different species will work on bigger animals. They have also developed a way to produce proteins from the cells of these animals that can help treat multiple sclerosis, and are currently working to develop a vaccine for HIV.

The glowing rabbits were bred with the same technique of injecting a fluorescent gene into an embryo, but researchers added a second gene to control how the luciferase was expressed. They wanted to make sure that the luciferase would only glow when exposed to specific kinds of light, and not in response to any other wavelengths. This allowed them to hone in on the areas of the rabbits’ bodies that had the highest concentrations of endocrine-disrupting substances.

The rabbits will continue to live normal lives, and the scientists are expecting to see the first glow-in-the-dark lambs to be born in November. They will be able to tell whether their lambs have absorbed the glowing protein from their parents by looking at them under a black light. These animals will be a great tool for tracking toxic chemicals that can build up in the environment and in animal bodies, but are too dangerous to be released into the wild.