Land Animals
Land animals have significant value in the field of genetic modification like aquatic animals for both practical and research purposes. Below you can find what are some of the most interesting and important developments with genetically modified animals to date.
Transgenic Mice
Transgenic mice are very important in the research aspect of genetic modification as they can be tailor made to cope with certain afflictions. Scientists use them to study the relationship between gene mutations and disease phenotypes, along with human diseases. By implanting mutated genes associated with a human disease into mice, scientists can determine how the gene would affect people and possibly how to deal with it. This allows scientists to use mice as human models, instead of experimenting with actual humans.
Glow In The Dark Cats
Probably one of the coolest genetic modifications, glow in the dark cats surprisingly is also very important for HIV research. What began as an experiment to see if scientists could put a fluorescent jellyfish gene in cats grew into a scientific discovery that could hold promise in the research of HIV and AIDS. Cats can fall victim to feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) which shows striking similarities to HIV. Knowing that cats can be used as research subjects is a very important breakthrough as researching genetic modification involving FIV could provide insight on the human version of the disease, HIV.
Web Spinning Goats
Spider silk is universally known as being an extremely useful resource, but getting the silk from spiders is not very optimal. Therefore, scientists made goats to do the job for them. By genetically modifying goats, scientists are now able to get spider silk from the goats' milk. The way it works is that the proteins used to make various spider silks, six proteins in total, were all genetically transferred to goats so that they would produce the proteins in their milk. This way scientists are able to easily get the protein to make the valuable spider silk without having to deal with actual spiders.
