I read an article about this late last week that explains a lot better the reasoning for those South Korean scientists creating this dog, which is one of several siblings that all fluoresce:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17003-fluorescent-puppy-is-worlds-first-transgenic-dog.html
It seems these dogs have been created as a step toward creating animals that serve as disease models. My former roommate, a neuroscientist, told me that labs can order mice and some other small mammals that have certain things muted out of their genes so that they can be used for researching specific diseases without things from those genes interfering. So with these beagles, scientists endowed them with cells from the sea anemones that produce the protein that fluoresces under ultraviolet light while trying to perfect the technique that would allow them to be bred for the same purpose as those mice. That's what I infer from the article; it's like they didn't want to come out and say it straight out because it's an unpleasant truth, and nobody, it seems, wants to admit that their company is experimenting on animals popularly regarded as pets. Anyone read it a different way?
The article also states that the scientists are probably going to stop what they're doing since going forward with creating dogs with altered genes is expensive, would create intelligent animals that require long-term care in and after life in the lab, and would be unpopular (darn right it is!!).
It's a shame that computer models are not yet sophisticated enough to imitate human life to the extent that experimentation on living creatures was no longer deemed necessary by some scientists. *sigh*
I hope this dog and its siblings have happy lives ahead of them.
