Thread: Thnx TTP for...

I've had "Furgalicius" stuck in my head for over a week now...I thought the solution would be to download and listin to the song, this normaly works for me, but after looping the music video on my computer all day (and listining to it while I played games) I think I have only made the problem worse.

T-to tha-A, to the S-T-E-Y gurl you tastey.

Flame........your a flamer

TOKYO (AP) — The age-old animosity between cats and mice could be a thing of the past with genetically modified mice that Japanese scientists say show no fear and shed new light on mammal behavior.

Scientists at Tokyo University say they have used genetic engineering to successfully switch off a mouse's instinct to cower at the smell or presence of cats — showing that fear is genetically hardwired and not learned through experience, as commonly believed.

"Mice are naturally terrified of cats, and usually panic or flee at the smell of one. But mice with certain nasal cells removed through genetic engineering didn't display any fear," said research team leader Ko Kobayakawa.

"The mice approached the cat, even snuggled up to it and played with it," Kobayakawa said. "The discovery that fear is genetically determined and not learned after birth is very interesting, and goes against what was previously thought."

The findings suggest that human aversion to dangerous smells like that of rotten food, for example, could also be genetically predetermined, he said.

Kobayakawa said his findings, published in the science magazine Nature last month, should help researchers shed further light on how the brain processes information about the outside world.

The Associated Press: Japan Scientists Develop Fearless Mouse

And if that wasn't weird enough...

South Korean scientists say they have cloned cats whose genes have been altered so that they glow in the dark - taking advantage of a technological twist that could someday be used to make more dramatic genetic changes in all sorts of creatures.

A research team at Gyeongsang National University, headed by Kong Il-Keun, produced several kitty clones in January and February, the government-managed Korea.net news service reported Wednesday. This week the scientists showed off the cats, which now weigh about 7 pounds (3 to 3.5 kilograms) and glow a dull red under ultraviolet light.

"The ability to manipulate the fluorescent protein and use this to clone cats opens new horizons for artificially creating animals with human illnesses linked to genetic causes," the Ministry of Science and Technology said in Wednesday's report.

The procedure for cloning a cat has been around for six years, and Kong himself first performed that particular feat back in 2004. What's noteworthy about the newly reported twist - other than that glow-in-the-dark kitties are really cool - is that scientists fiddled with the donor cat's genetic code, then passed those changes on to the clones.

Here's what the researchers say they did: They took skin cells from Turkish Angora female cats and used a virus to insert the genetic instructions for making red fluorescent protein. Then they put the gene-altered nuclei into eggs for cloning. The cloned embryos were implanted back into the donor cats, which effectively became the surrogate mothers for their own clones.

Four kittens were born by Caesarian section, but one of them died during the procedure, according to the Korea Times. The fact that the kittens' skin cells glowed under ultraviolet light served as evidence that they were really gene-altered clones.

Assuming that the results are confirmed, Kong's cats would join mice and pigs in the glow-in-the-dark clone menagerie. The implication is that if you can pass along the easy-to-recognize coding for fluorescent markers through cloning, you could eventually pass along more complex genetic coding.

Theoretically, you could add in the coding for an endangered species, producing cloned hybrids to boost the gene pool for Sumatran tigers, Iberian lynxes and the like. You might even stick in the coding to give other creatures human diseases, so that they can be studied without raising the level of ethical concern that comes with human experimentation. (I realize that there's a different set of ethical concerns about such trangenic experiments, however.)

Most provocatively, animal clones might be genetically altered to produce human body parts. Does that sound like a way-out science-fiction plot? Well, it's already happening, and sparking an unsettling debate.

This week's report doesn't mean that glow-in-the-dark pets will be waiting under the Christmas tree anytime soon. There are a few caveats surrounding these cats:

* This research came to light through press releases rather than peer-reviewed articles, and many of the details still have to be published and replicated. It doesn't help that South Korea was ground zero for the biggest scientific scandal in cloning just a couple of years ago. You'll want to wait for confirmation before you put too much stock in Kong's glowing reports.

* Even if the results are confirmed, they represent just one more small step in the long march of genetic progress. Those cool fluorescent proteins merely serve as a guide for more substantive genetic modifications.

* Even if glow-in-the-dark cats become routine in the laboratory, that doesn't mean they'll hit it off as housepets. Glow-in-the-dark fish have been offered commercially for several years - but they're still illegal in California and many countries, due to concerns about genetically modified organisms. What's more, it costs tens of thousands of dollars to produce just one run-of-the-mill, non-glowing cat clone - a price tag so hefty that it's not commercially viable.

Cloned cats that glow?! - Cosmic Log - msnbc.com

and the vid:

msnbc.com Video Player


I predict that if they keep this up, some crazed Korean scientist will try tp wipe out Japan with a real life Godzilla.

I guess this is good. mabey someday this can be used to make life much better.

The future is going to be really strange.

Instead of creating some glowing kitty, how about researching diseases and how to prevent/cure them...


...you know, instead of WASTING FUCKING TIME ON GLOWING CATS. :nope:

The idea, Jeffy, is to work out how to do stuff before starting to do stuff.

Glow in the dark pussy would be useful in some circumstances though…