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shallowdeep -> RE: Uh, why???? (5/5/2013 1:22:55 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: LafayetteLady
quote:
ORIGINAL: Hillwilliam
They wanted to give the nightshift coyotes something to chase.
Uhhh....coyotes are nocturnal, so they are all on the nightshift.
In fairness, it's easy to get the diurnal, shift-working, sheep-seeking wolf confused with his more wily cousin.
On a more serious note, the sheep are not actually phosphorescent and don't really "glow in the dark." Instead, they are fluorescent (someone else already wrote something about the difference) and only appear green when being directly illuminated by UV light. Green fluorescent protein (GFP) is very commonly used in biology as a sort of tag or marker. It's the sort of thing that was valuable enough to win the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Among other uses, it provides an easy way to verify that a gene was inserted and that the proteins it's coding for are being expressed, which is what the research group in question was doing. A poorly translated article still gives more info than the superficial coverage linked in the OP; basically, now that the researchers know they have a functioning gene insertion technique, they hope to work on getting potentially more useful proteins, like human growth hormone, expressed in the sheep's milk. The milk, in turn, could then be processed to isolate the useful protein and perhaps eventually be used to produce cheaper medicines.
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