快猫短视频

GENETIC engineers have a new tool for tracking genes in genetically modified
insects. The trick, according to researchers in Germany, is to give the
creatures fluorescent green eyes.

One way of tracking genes is to use a fluorescent marker protein from the
jellyfish Aequorea victoria. But the fluorescence it produces is often too weak
to be useful, so Ernst Wimmer and his colleagues at the University of Bayreuth
have devised a way to make the fluorescence more noticeable.

The researchers added the gene that codes for the glowing protein to a short
鈥渏umping gene鈥� that splices itself into DNA. They then added a further DNA
sequence, which binds strongly with a protein found in eyes.

When fruit flies and flour beetles took up this gene package, they produced
the fluorescent protein in their eyes, the biologists found. 鈥淭his is a marker
system that should work in any species with eyes,鈥� Wimmer says.

Geneticists already know how to modify insects so they are no longer able to spread diseases
(快猫短视频, 11 May 1996, p 16). But only a few of the
insects鈥� progeny inherit the 鈥渄isease-disabling鈥� genes. If these genes were
added to Wimmer鈥檚 package, however, it could be used to pick out those
individuals that have actually inherited the genes.

鈥淭his sounds like it could be useful, but they鈥檝e only tried it in fruit
flies and flour beetles,鈥� says Peter Lawrence, a developmental biologist at the
Medical Research Council in Cambridge. He would like to see further
demonstrations in a wide variety of animals. 鈥淲e鈥檒l need to see far more before
we can say this is a universal marker,鈥� he says.

Source: Nature (vol 402, p 370)