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Scientists Make Piglets Glow Under a Black Light

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By altering the genes of these piglets, scientists made the animals glow in the dark. (Image credit: University of Hawaii at Manoa, Vimeo)

Scientists say they've created ten genetically engineered piglets this year that glow green under a black light.

The pigs' embryos were injected with a molecule from bioluminescent jellyfish that carries instructions to make green fluorescent protein, or GFP. This technique allows researchers to attach harmless glow-in-the-dark tags to specific proteins in animals. The scientists who discovered and developed GFP earned a Nobel Prize in 2008, and researchers have previously created glowing bunnies, frogs and even glow-in-the-dark cats in the name of science.

Study researcher Stefan Moisyadi, a bioscientist from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, explained in a statement that the GFP in the piglets is "marker to show that we can take a gene that was not originally present in the animal and now exists in it." (Video footage of two of the piglets in the dark show that the gene is definitely present.)

The researchers say the ultimate goal of their work is to figure out how to introduce foreign genes into larger animals that could result in more efficient treatments for disease. Led by scientists at the South China Agricultural University, the researchers have submitted their work to the journal Biology of Reproduction.

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Megan Gannon
Megan Gannon
Live Science Contributor
Megan has been writing for Live Science and Space.com since 2012. Her interests range from archaeology to space exploration, and she has a bachelor's degree in English and art history from New York University. Megan spent two years as a reporter on the national desk at NewsCore. She has watched dinosaur auctions, witnessed rocket launches, licked ancient pottery sherds in Cyprus and flown in zero gravity. Follow her on Twitter and Google+.