Frankenstein's Cat: Cuddling Up to Biotech's Brave New Beasts (2 page)

It’s true that remaking other species according to our own wants and needs doesn’t necessarily put animal welfare first. Selective breeding hasn’t always turned out well for animals—we’ve saddled dog breeds with all sorts of hereditary diseases and created turkeys with such gigantic breasts that they can barely walk. And of course, biotechnology gives us new ways to do damage. The Fudan University scientists have created mouse embryos with defects so severe that they die in the womb. Some of their mutant mice are prone to tumors, or kidney disease, or neurological problems. One strain, unable to absorb nutrients from food, essentially starves to death.

In fact, a whole industry has sprung up to sell diseased lab animals to scientists, with numerous biotech companies hawking their unique creations. In October 2011, many of these companies converged on St. Pete Beach, Florida, for an international meeting of scientists who work with genetically modified organisms. Representatives from various biotech firms held court from booths ringing a hotel ballroom, advertising animals that had been engineered to suffer from all sorts of medical afflictions. One company was selling pigs with cystic fibrosis and cancer; a brochure from another outlined eleven available strains of rodents, from the NSE-p25 mouse, designed to display Alzheimer’s-like symptoms, to the 11BHSD2 mouse, which has a tendency to drop dead of heart failure. (And just in case nothing there caught your fancy, one company’s poster promised, “You design the experiment, we’ll design the mice.”) These companies aren’t making sickly animals purely to be cruel, of course; studying these creatures yields valuable insight into human disease. That’s good news for us, but little consolation for a tumor-riddled rodent.

If there is peril here, there is also great promise. Biotechnology could do more for animals than it’s given credit for. Sure, we can make animals sick, but we can also choose to deploy our species-shaping powers to help other species survive and thrive, to create healthier, happier, fitter critters, and some scientists are doing just that. With the sophisticated techniques at our fingertips, we may even be able to undo some of the damage we’ve done to other species, alleviating genetic disorders in dogs, for instance, or bringing wild animal populations back from the brink of extinction. Some forward-thinking philosophers are dreaming of more extreme interventions, such as boosting the brainpower of apes, and using genetic modification and electronic enhancement to help animals transcend the limits of their own bodies.

Right now all the options are open. Though biotechnology’s strange new creatures are being created in the world’s labs, they don’t tend to stay there very long, and there are already cutting-edge animals living in fields, homes, and nature preserves across America. Before long, we may all be able to shop for animals the same way that scientists in Florida shopped for carefully engineered mice. Imagine a future in which we can each pick out the perfect animal from a catalogue of endless options. We could create something for everyone. Avid nighttime reader? How about your own Mr. Green Genes so you can stay up late, reading by the light of the cat? For the twelve-year-old who has everything, skip the toy cars and planes at Christmas and wrap up a remote-controlled rodent. Equestrians could order up a foal with the same genes as the winner of last year’s Kentucky Derby, while sprinters could get themselves a golden retriever whose artificial carbon-fiber legs would allow it to run as fast as a greyhound. The tools of biotechnology are becoming increasingly accessible to the public; future generations of animal lovers may be able to design their own creatures without fancy lab equipment or advanced scientific training.

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In the pages that follow, we’ll go on a journey from petri dish to pet store, seeking out the revolutionary breeds of beasts that are taking their places in the world. We’ll venture from the rocky shores of California to the dusty fields of Texas, from the canine clones that live in Korean labs to the pets that sleep in our homes. We’ll delve into genes and brains, into work that seems frivolous and projects that are anything but. We’ll meet an engineer who is turning beetles into stunt planes and a biologist who believes cloning just might save endangered species. And, of course, we’ll come to know the animals themselves—from Jonathan, a sad sack of a seal with hundreds of online friends, to Artemis, a potentially life-saving goat whose descendants could one day take over Brazil.

Along the way, we’ll puzzle through some larger questions. We’ll probe how our contemporary scientific techniques are different from what’s come before and whether they represent a fundamental change in our relationship with other species. We’ll consider the relationship we have with animals and the one we’d like to have.

Most of us care deeply about some form of animal life, whether it’s the cat or dog curled up on the couch—60 percent of Americans share their homes with pets of one species or another—the chickens laying our eggs, or some exotic predator fighting to survive as its habitat disappears. Now that we can sculpt life into an endless parade of forms, what we choose to create reveals what it is we want from other species—and what we want
for
them. But even if you feel no special affection for the creatures with whom we share this planet, our reinvention of animals matters for us, too. It provides a peek into our own future, at the ways we may start to enhance and alter ourselves. Most of all, our grand experiments reveal how entangled the lives of human and nonhuman animals have become, how intertwined our fates are. Enterprising scientists, entrepreneurs, and philosophers are dreaming up all sorts of projects that could alter the course of our collective future.

So what does biotechnology really mean for the world’s wild things? And what do our brave new beasts say about us? Our search for answers begins with a tank of glowing fish.

1. Go Fish

To an aspiring animal owner, Petco presents an embarrassment of riches. Here, in the basement of a New York City store—where the air carries the sharp tang of hay and the dull musk of rodent dander—is a squeaking, squealing, almost endless menagerie of potential pets. There are the spindly-legged lizards scuttling across their sand-filled tanks; the preening cockatiels, a spray of golden feathers atop their heads; and, of course, the cages of pink-nosed white mice training for a wheel-running marathon. There are chinchillas and canaries, dwarf hamsters, tree frogs, bearded dragons, red-footed tortoises, red-bellied parrots, and African fat-tailed geckoes.

But one of these animals is not like the others. The discerning pet owner in search of something new and different merely has to head to the aquatic display and keep walking past the speckled koi and fantail bettas, the crowds of goldfish and minnows. And there they are, cruising around a small tank hidden beneath the stairs: inch-long candy-colored fish in shades of cherry, lime, and tangerine. Technically, they are zebrafish (
Danio rerio
), which are native to South Asian lakes and rivers and usually covered with black and white stripes. But these swimmers are adulterated with a smidgen of something extra. The Starfire Red fish contain a dash of DNA from the sea anemone; the Electric Green, Sunburst Orange, Cosmic Blue, and Galactic Purple strains all have a nip of sea coral. These borrowed genes turn the zebrafish fluorescent, so under black or blue lights they glow. These are GloFish, America’s first genetically engineered pets.

Though we’ve meddled with many species through selective breeding, these fish mark the beginning of a new era, one in which we have the power to directly manipulate the biological codes of our animal friends. Our new molecular techniques change the game. They allow us to modify species quickly, rather than over the course of generations; doctor a single gene instead of worrying about the whole animal; and create beings that would never exist in nature, mixing and matching DNA from multiple species into one great living mash-up. We have long desired creature companions tailored to our
exact
specifications. Science is finally making that precision possible.

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Though our ancestors knew enough about heredity to breed better working animals, our ability to tinker with genes directly is relatively new. After all, it wasn’t until 1944 that scientists identified DNA as the molecule of biological inheritance, and 1953 that Watson and Crick deduced DNA’s double helical structure. Further experiments through the ’50s and ’60s revealed how genes work inside a cell. For all its seeming mystery, DNA has a straightforward job: It tells the body to make proteins. A strand of DNA is composed of individual units called nucleotides, strung together like pearls on a necklace. There are four distinct types of nucleotides, each containing a different chemical base. Technically, the bases are called adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine, but they usually go by their initials: A, T, C, and G. What we call a “gene” is merely a long sequence of these As, Ts, Cs, and Gs. The order in which these letters appear tells the body which proteins to make—and where and when to make them. Change some of the letters and you can alter protein manufacturing and the ultimate characteristics of an organism.

Once we cracked the genetic code, it wasn’t long before we figured out how to manipulate it. In the 1970s, scientists set out to determine whether it was possible to transfer genes from one species into another. They isolated small stretches of DNA from
Staphylococcus—
the bacteria that cause staph infections—and the African clawed frog. Then they inserted these bits of biological code into
E. coli.
The staph and frog genes were fully functional in their new cellular homes, making
E. coli
the world’s first genetically engineered organism. Mice were up next, and in the early 1980s, two labs reported that they’d created rodents carrying genes from viruses and rabbits. Animals such as these mice, which contain a foreign piece of DNA in their genomes, are known as transgenic, and the added genetic sequence is called a transgene.

Encouraged and inspired by these successes, scientists started moving DNA all around the animal kingdom, swapping genes among all sorts of swimming, slithering, and scurrying creatures. Researchers embarking on these experiments had multiple goals in mind. For starters, they simply wanted to see what was possible. How far could they push these genetic exchanges? What could they
do
with these bits and pieces of DNA?

There was also immense potential for basic research; taking a gene from one animal and putting it into another could help researchers learn more about how it worked and the role it played in development or disease. Finally, there were promising commercial applications, an opportunity to engineer animals whose bodies produced highly desired proteins or creatures with economically valuable traits. (In one early project, for instance, researchers set out to make a leaner, faster-growing pig.)

Along the way, geneticists developed some neat tricks, including figuring out how to engineer animals that glowed. They knew that some species, such as the crystal jellyfish, had evolved this talent on their own. One moment, the jellyfish is an unremarkable transparent blob; the next it’s a neon-green orb floating in a dark sea. The secret to this light show is a compound called green fluorescent protein (GFP), naturally produced by the jellyfish, which takes in blue light and reemits it in a kiwi-colored hue. Hit the jelly with a beam of blue light, and a ring of green dots will suddenly appear around its bell-shaped body, not unlike a string of Christmas lights wrapped around a tree.

When scientists discovered GFP, they began to wonder what would happen if they took this jellyfish gene and popped it into another animal. Researchers isolated and copied the jellyfish’s GFP gene in the lab in the 1990s, and then the real fun began. When they transferred the gene into roundworms, rats, and rabbits, these animals also started producing the protein, and if you blasted them with blue light, they also gave off a green glow. For that reason alone, GFP became a valuable tool for geneticists. Researchers testing a new method of genetic modification can practice with GFP, splicing the gene into an organism’s genome. If the animal lights up, it’s obvious that the procedure worked. GFP can also be coupled with another gene, allowing scientists to determine whether the gene in question is active. (A green glow means the paired gene is on.)

Scientists discovered other potential uses, too. Zhiyuan Gong, a biologist at the National University of Singapore, wanted to use GFP to turn fish into living pollution detectors, swimming canaries in underwater coal mines. He hoped to create transgenic fish that would blink on and off in the presence of toxins, turning bright green when they were swimming in contaminated water. The first step was simply to make fish that glowed. His team accomplished that feat in 1999 with the help of a common genetic procedure called microinjection. Using a tiny needle, he squirted the GFP gene directly into some zebrafish embryos. In some of the embryos, this foreign bit of biological code managed to sneak into the genome, and the fish gave off that telltale green light. In subsequent research, the biologists also made strains in red—thanks to a fluorescent protein from a relative of the sea anemone—and yellow, and experimented with adding these proteins in combination. One of their published papers showcases a neon rainbow of fish that would do Crayola proud.
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To Richard Crockett, the co-founder of the company that sells GloFish, such creatures have more than mere scientific value—they have an obvious aesthetic beauty. Crockett vividly remembers learning about GFP in a biology class. He was captivated by an image of brain cells glowing green and red, thanks to the addition of the genes for GFP and a red fluorescent protein. Crockett was a premed student, but he was also an entrepreneur. In 1998, at the age of twenty-one, he and a childhood friend, Alan Blake, launched an online education company. By 2000, the company had become a casualty of the dot-com crash. As the two young men cast about for new business ideas, Crockett thought back to the luminescent brain cells and put a proposal to Blake: What if they brought the beauty of fluorescence genes to the public by selling glowing, genetically modified fish?