South Korean Scientists Create $3 Million Glow-in-the-Dark Dog

Wired:

Meet Tegon. She's a beagle and she lives in South Korea. Oh, and she's been genetically engineered to glow fluorescent green when under ultraviolet light.

Researchers from South Korea have used cloning techniques to create a dog that will let off an impressive green glow when a doxycycline antibiotic is slipped into its food. Without the drug, the dog's superhero powers will fade.

The team from Seoul National University made Tegon using the same somatic cell nuclear transfer technology that they used to create to the world's first cloned dog, Snuppy, in 2005.

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Christian Science Monitor:

"The creation of Tegon opens new horizons since the gene injected to make the dogglow can be substituted with genes that trigger fatal human diseases," the news agency quoted lead researcher Lee Byeong-chun as saying.

He said the dog was created using the somatic cell nuclear transfer technology that the university team used to make the world's first cloned dog, Snuppy, in 2005.

The scientist said that because there are 268 illnesses that humans and dogs have in common, creating dogs that artificially show such symptoms could aid treatment methods for diseases that afflict humans.

The latest discovery published in 'Genesis', an international journal, took four years of research with roughly 3.2 billion won ($3 million) spent to make the dog and conduct the necessary verification tests, Yonhap said.