14 DAY TRIAL // For the first time ever, this spring saw the presentation of a scientific achievement that had the power to change the way we looked at diseases and attempted to find cures for them, for ever. Japanese researchers at the Central Institute for Experimental Animals, in Kawasaki, managed to obtain marmosets (a species of monkey) whose feet appeared green under ultraviolet light. This was made possible by the fact that a gene coding for the green fluorescent protein, extracted from jellyfish, was successfully incorporated into the mammals' genome.
While this may seem common at first, it was the first time in history when a completely foreign gene was taken from a fish and incorporated into a higher mammal's genome in such a way that viable individuals developed. Additionally, and most importantly, the trait was passed down to the next monkey generation that was born without suffering any genetic modifications from the scientists. The jellyfish-derived gene was directly passed down from mother to offspring, and accepted without any problems, Technology Review reports.
The implications of this achievement are fundamental. Consider, for a moment, that a large number of diseases, including Huntington's disease, Parkinson's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and Alzheimer's disease, is caused by genes. This means that it may be possible to isolate these genes in the future, and then transmit them into colonies of specially engineered primates. This would allow for nearly human testing conditions, and may further research on the issue considerably. Such a study would, indeed, be a lot more conclusive to our needs than one conducted on lab rats or mice.
“We've been waiting a long time for [disease] models like these,” Neuroscience Professor John Morrison, from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, says. The Japanese achievement, which was led by scientist Erika Sasaki, is, however, a long way from providing all the necessary conditions for the emergence of transgenic research colonies, experts believe. The Japanese researchers used a virus to introduce the new gene in the marmosets, so they could not control how it was distributed and incorporated. For medical purposes, a more precise method of gene insertion has to be devised first.