Scientists Splice Fluorescent Gene Into Monkey

Jan. 11 -- His fur is light brown and black, he weighs just over 3 pounds, he is frisky and has long white fingers and big brown eyes. But the most distinguishing feature of ANDi, a 3-month-old rhesus monkey, is that every cell of his body has been altered by man.

For the first time, scientists have modified the DNA of a primate species, whose genetic coding varies from people's by only slightly more than 1 percent. Scientists at Oregon Health Sciences University inserted a variation of a gene, plucked from a fluorescent jellyfish, into the DNA of an unfertilized egg. The egg was then developed into ANDi, which is a backward acronym for "inserted DNA" and scientists expect it should make the monkey's cells glow — glow green, in fact — under fluorescent light.

A Close Human Model

By altering the genetic makeup of ANDi, researchers hope they have demonstrated they will be able to introduce into monkeys other genes that cause a host of diseases in people. Such work could provide living laboratories to analyze the effects and possible treatments for diseases like Alzheimer's, breast cancer or diabetes.

"The fact that this has been done in a monkey is exciting because the physiology of a rhesus is very similar to human beings as is the genome, itself," says Kathleen Grant, a researcher at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, who studies possible genetic links to alcoholism. "So then you have a close model to the human condition."

Scientists first altered the genes of an animal — a mouse — in 1976. Since then they have tinkered with the DNA of fruit flies, sheep, goats, rabbits, cattle and pigs. The rhesus monkey is the closest relative to humans to be genetically altered. The jellyfish gene that was added to ANDi has no medical value in itself, but it can serve as a dramatic marker since it makes the cells of an animal glow green when exposed to fluorescent black light.

Lead author of the study to be published in Science, Anthony Chan, says his team's work is "a success in showing that we are capable to deliver a new gene into the genetic blueprint of non-human primates." But so far there is a slight wrinkle in the results: ANDi doesn't glow green — at least not yet.