Branded Butterfly Wings



Telegraph: "A glowing green logo drawn by scientists on the wing of a genetically altered butterfly could herald the day that the insects are adorned with adverts and slogans. A team at the University at Buffalo that developed the world's first GM butterfly has now adapted the work to create the fluorescent marking on the wings of the insect to demonstrate an innovative tool that will make it easier to find out what genes do, in this case those that play a role in making the patterns on wings, from stripes to eye spots."

Gotta give credit to the newspaper's imagination. The original article's abstract reads much more dryly: "Precise temporal and spatial regulation of transgene expression is a critical tool to investigate gene function in developing organisms."

If you are into ads and bugs, here:

-- via Ad Rag; image from the provisional paper at BioMed Central
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