Have you ever seen glow-in-the-dark-animals? Those are the animals who genetically modified (GM animals) in order to lead improvements in animal breeding and reproduction in genetics (Livens,1). Researches genetically engineered animals by manipulating or modifying the DNA of selected animals to make those animals have a particular characteristics and to introduce certain desired traits. Through the process, part of genetic codes or DNA are inserted to, extracted from or replaced with the genes of interest (Panse,1). There are three way of genetically engineering technology: analytical, applied and chemical genetic engineering. 

Analytical genetic engineering: Before scientists do an experiment in an actual practice, it is an engineering to create genetic models using computer software. It is helpful to reduce risks which could cause while they use animals as an experiment object.

Applied genetic engineering: It is an engineering that practically apply the genetic experiment to living organism by manipulating their genes for making genetic copies or creating various characteristic. Cloning and GM is counted as this genetic engineering.

chemical genetic engineering: It is a preparation for applied genetic engineering. It includes separating, classifying and graphing genes to prepare an actual experiment.

Then, how are GM animals actually genetically modified by applied genetic engineering? A diagram shows the process of creating transgenic animals below.

Graphics by Jeffery Lim, Copyright @ 2007 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

Scientist believed that they could develop the area of transgenic or genetic modification if they became successful in creating a perfect glow-in-the-dark-animals. So they has started to investigate into creating glowing animals since Osamu Shimomura and Frank Johnson, working at the Friday Harbor Laboratories of the University of Washington, succeeded in separating dependent bioluminescent protein from the Aequorea victoria jellyfish, which they named aequorin in 1961. During the process of isolating the bioluminescent protein from aequorin, they discovered second blue-emitting bioluminescent protein. It emit a green light when it is illuminated with ultraviolet light, and eventually, they were able to extract Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) from jellyfishes (Piston,1).

After 1996 when Teh Ping Lin came up with an idea to insert a capable DNA to micro-inject fertilized mouse eggs to discover what they want through an experiment, the first genetic modification of animals was came out by the virologist Rudolph Jaenisch in 1974. And their effort to be successful in transgenic technology has kept developed over time, and scientists began to transfer Jellyfish’s fluorescent protein to living organisms to clearly check whether they succeed in breeding an organism by transferring a foreign DNA into the different animals or not (Chavis, 1).  After GM fluorescent animals has been developing, the first publicly available genetically engineered pet came out in the United States, and that is Glofish. Because fish market at that time usually produced fishes for food supply, so there were some conflicts because those fluorescent fish are released for entertainment purpose. But it was proven that Glofish, which is genetically modified Zebrafish with  bright red, green and orange fluorescent colors, has no threat to food supply market, Globefish got welcomed as an unique pet in the world.

Moreover, Eduard Kac the artist actually used this technique for artistic purpose in May 2000. Kak introduced his albino rabbit, Alba, which is glowing with green fluorescent when it exposed to blue light. He tried to combine this scientific technique into his art, but scientist didn’t agree with him, so there was a slight conflict between art and science (Hansen, 1).

- Advance in medicine: Scientists create a transgenic animals which has a particular 
                                         traits, and find the way to heal them. Consequently, they got to 
                                         discover the method to develop human's medical system.
- Research values: There are some disease which the scientist can not investigate 
                                  certain disease model in human, so scientist can create a certain 
                                  transgenic animals that has a specific disease and study without 
                                  damaging the health of humans.
- Economic profitability: Transgenic animals technology could increase the number of 
                                           food product, therefore, it can helps people to earn more 
                                           economic profit and so on.

- Unethical: To create many transgenic animals as much as we need, scientists uses
                     and create many animals as an experiment objects, and we could say we
                     exploit them by violating their right to live.
- Unknown side effect: While scientists do an experiment in order to discover a new
                                         substance, a new disease are appeared accidentally.
- Harms the animal: Because scientists have experimental tests using an animal, and
                                    that test is not proven yet today, many experimental animals can
                                    be killed because of a fail experiments. But it is hard to be
                                    successful in achieving what they want at once, many animals die
                                    because of those kinds of practical experiment.

Lombardo. Crystal, "Transgenic Animals Pros and Cons." VisionLaunch, Vision Launch Development Group, 23 Nov. 2014, http://visionlaunch.com/transgenic-animals-pros-and-cons/#. Accessed 21 May 2017

This is a method to inject a chosen gene into another organism’s fertilized egg. The first trial was happened by Gordon and Ruddle in 1981. There is a variety of species that scientists can apply this technique to, so it has a strong advantage of using this technique.

This is a technique to insert DNA sequences into embryonic (unborn baby in the process of development) stem cells. Because scientists can choose to make the gene be function or not, so it has another name, which is “knock-out method.”

By modes of a carrier or vector (virus or a plasmid), transgenic technology is meditated to increase the probability of expression, and it takes an advantage of the organism’s ability to infect host cells. This method is usually used for creating a transgenic animal that will be used as an experiment object which has traits to be healed.

Buy. Marie, Editorial Assistant, Canadian Council on Animal Care (CCAC), “Transgenic
     Animals.” UniversityOfCalgary, University of Calgary, n.d., 
     http://people.ucalgary.ca/~browder/transgenic.html. Accessed on 23 May 2017.