Glowing cats can fight HIV / AIDS

Three genetically altered cats with a glowing body can prevent immunodeficiency virus in cats (FIV) that are opening new avenues for research against century disease - HIV / AIDS.

The finding also helps veterinarians find a way to combat the virus that kills millions of wild cats each year and can infect other species of cats, including lions.

Three 1-year-old cats named TgCat1, TgCat2 and TgCat3 , are called GM cats, which have green glowing bodies under the ghostly ultraviolet light because scientists have given The green fluorescent protein gene (GFP) is derived from jellyfish into their bodies. GM cats also carry a type of monkey gene, called TRIMCyp , that protects short-tailed brown monkeys from infection by the FIV virus .

The team hopes this study will help protect animals generally from FIV. Thereby, scientists can develop and test similar approaches on humans from infection by the HIV virus. Currently, they have also shown that cultivating white blood cells in the laboratory from cats will help animals immune to FIV.

The cat with the body glows green. (Photo: Newscientist)

'Animals have protective genes in all tissues including lymph nodes, thymus and spleen,' said Eric Poeschla from the Mayo Clinic University of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota, who led the study. know. 'This is very important because it is the place where the disease actually happens, and where you can see the HIV virus destroys human T cells'.

These are not the first GM cats, but the new method is more effective and flexible than the previous techniques. Poeschla's techniques are direct, efficient and much simpler. It has been successfully applied in the creation of GM monkeys, GM cows, GM pigs and GM mice. Poeschla implanted the research gene into a chronic virus and then directly into a oocyte or cat's oocyte. Oocytes combined with new genes are then fertilized and placed in the womb of the mother's child.

Poeschla implanted 12 fetuses in five pregnancies, and three calves born alive. In addition to those 12 fetuses, 11 successful new gene combinations have shown the effectiveness of this method.

TgCat1, the living male cat, mate with three normal female cats and produce eight healthy kittens. They all carry such genes because they are inherited from genetics.