Transgenic animals have had their DNA altered by inserting another animal’s DNA into their own code. They can be used for research, medicine, and food production. The public is still wary of eating them, and there are concerns about their impact on native populations. The GloFish® brand is a notable example of a transgenic animal, created to detect pollutants but now sold as a novelty item.
Transgenic animals are genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that are animals. They have somehow changed their genetic material, for a variety of reasons. In some cases these animals may be designed simply to be visually interesting, to study, to produce more meat, or to perform a specific task better. They had their DNA specifically altered by inserting another animal’s DNA into their own code, unlike cisgenic animals, which have their DNA altered by other means.
The simplest type of transgenic animals are those that have genetic material inserted into their code for research purposes. A notable example of this is the injection of material from a certain jellyfish species into other creatures. This material is responsible for a fluorescent protein, GFP, which then allows researchers to track GFP-tagged proteins in the animal it was inserted into.
There are valuable uses for transgenic animals in medicine as well, with many animals being modified to produce something humans need. One of the first uses of transgenesis, for example, was to make E. coli bacteria produce human insulin, which could be harvested at low cost, rather than having to be harvested from more expensive animals such as pigs. A more contemporary example can be seen in the use of transgenic goats to produce an anticoagulant in their milk. The milk can then be collected from the animals and the blood thinner, ATryn, can be extracted and used in situations such as surgery where the blood cannot be allowed to clot.
In research, transgenic animals can also enable specific research possibilities. For example, modified mice are often used in laboratory tests. They can be modified so that researchers can observe the specific responses their tissues have to disease. This can lead to the development of medicines and treatments for humans suffering from those same diseases.
For the most part, transgenic animals have not become widely commercially available. That’s partly because the public is still wary of eating them, and there’s some concern about what would happen if some super-species were to escape into the wild and overrun native populations. Many fish farms, for example, have developed transgenic versions of popular food fish, which can grow many times the size of their unmodified counterparts. Ultimately this could allow for much cheaper farming of food fish, lowering the price of these fish for consumers.
One of the most iconic transgenic animals is the GloFish® brand. These are zebrafish that have been modified to include genes that make them glow in fluorescent colors. The fish were created in 1999 with the aim of helping detect pollutants, but it quickly became apparent that they had huge potential as a novelty item. They are available in three colors, with a green GloFish® derived from jellyfish GFP protein, a red GloFish® derived from a type of marine coral, and a yellow GloFish® derived from a variant of the jellyfish protein.
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