TheUtah Headlines

My view on the news.

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Green Pigs Don't Fly

Asians continue to make novel advances simply "because they can." Mainly this is in reference to Japanese electronic gadgets that have little useful purpose. Recall that it was a South Korean scientist who created the first cloned dog--although the results are undergoing sharp criticism. What might they think of next?

Scientists in Taiwan successfully bred fluorescent green pigs. They had previously developed the world's first transgenic glowing fish in 2003. About the pigs, professor Wu Shinn-Chih of the National Taiwan University’s Institute and Department of Animal Science and Technology, quipped, "There are partially fluorescent green pigs elsewhere, but ours are the only ones in the world that are green from inside out. Even their hearts and internal organs are green."

The transgenic pigs, commonly used to study human diseases, would help researchers monitor and trace changes of the tissues during the physical development, Wu said.

They claim it is all done for the sake of expanding stem cell research. So far they have not created pigs with wings, though.