genetic modifications
kthompson | November 3, 2009
Sketch by Peter Gulsvig, renowned Zartist
While I believe this bit of news has been well circulated this week, I wanted to give it the Zooillogix bump. Plus, I can only assume Zooillogix readers look to our blog for the latest breaking news... thus it would be a great disservice to all 25 of them to leave this unreported. University of Rochester biologists think they've figured out why the beloved naked mole rat continues to live their entire 30 year moley lifespans without ever having a tumor. That's right. No researcher has ever discovered evidence of cancer in these beauts.
The biologists…
zooillogix | August 2, 2007Scientists have created a jellyfish with twelve heads in a lab at Hanover University of Veterinary Medicine in Germany. Bernd Schierwater and colleague Wolfgang Jakob (or "God" as they like to collectively call themselves) claim to have created the freakish monstrosity to study how colonies of multiheaded organisms develop in nature. By manipulating certain Cnox genes, a specific kind of gene which helps control how the bodies of jellyfish embryos form, Schierwater and Jakob caused the embryo to develop in strange ways. Simply by inhibiting the Cnox-2 gene, up to twelve heads would form. The…
zooillogix | July 25, 2007Funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, scientists are manufacturing antidotes to deadly nerve gases through the milk of genetically modified goats. According to an article in on BBC.com, the antidote, named recombinant butyrylcholinesterase, could be used as a precautionary drug to protect soldiers on the battlefield from nerve gas attacks and also as a treatment for people already exposed to such gases as sarin and VX.Milking goats...saving lives.
Recombinant butyrylcholinesterase is an enzyme naturally produced in human bodies but only in tiny amounts, much too small to use as an…