Wired reports on transgenic advances that could benefit neuroscience and stem cell research:
"The marmosets, pictured above, express a green fluorescent protein
in their skin. The gene for producing the glow was delivered to the
first marmoset embryos via a modified virus. But now that modification
method could become unnecessary. One male marmoset, number 666,
fathered a child that also contained the transgenes. 'The birth of this transgenic marmoset baby is undoubtedly a milestone,' developmental biologists Gerald Schatten and Shoukhrat Mitalipov
at the Pittsburgh Development Center and Oregon Stem Cell Center…wrote in a commentary accompanying the study Thursday in
Nature. 'The cumbersome and often frustrating process of making a
transgenic animal from scratch need now only occur with founder
animals.'
