Field of Science

Glo-cat is too spooky

The Phactor really likes cats, and as every cat owner can tell you, cats can be pretty sneaky. Just this morning a feline houseguest did something that bonked something into the wall somewhere, but upon investigating, everyone was sitting in the hallway looking innocent. And now a cat that glows green! It's bad enough when the big black one sticks her face in yours at 4 AM and opens those big green eyes, but to have the whole face glowing green, maybe not. To be fair, the cat only glows under a certain type of illumination, so maybe the specter of green glowing cats prowling your house at night is over wrought. But why make a cat glow green? In this particular case the gene causing the green glow is a marker to show that an anti-viral gene was also inserted into the cell. Feline immunodeficiency virus, or FIV, is decimating cat populations in many parts of the world, so the idea is to genetically modify old Purrpuss to possess an antiviral gene. The green glowing marker is what tells you the gene that was inserted into a fertilized egg, a zygote, was successfully replicated and passed on to each and every cell in the cat's body. But let us hope that no idiot will get the idea of genetically modifying cats to glow different colors for reasons of appealing to super-idiots who want something different in a tabby. Hmm, could you make an orange-green calico glo-cat?

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