People have been selectively breeding cats and canine for hundreds of years to make extra fascinating pets. A brand new startup referred to as the Los Angeles Venture goals to hurry up that course of with genetic engineering to make glow-in-the-dark rabbits, hypoallergenic cats and canine, and probably, in the future, precise unicorns.
The Los Angeles Venture is the brainchild of biohacker Josie Zayner, who in 2017 publicly injected herself with the gene-editing device Crispr throughout a convention in San Francisco and livestreamed it. “I want to help humans genetically modify themselves,” she stated on the time. She’s additionally given herself a fecal transplant and a DIY Covid vaccine and is the founder and CEO of The Odin, an organization that sells house genetic-engineering kits.
Now, Zayner desires to create the subsequent era of pets. “I think, as a human species, it’s kind of our moral prerogative to level up animals,” she says.
Cofounded with biotech entrepreneur Cathy Tie, a former Thiel Fellow, the Los Angeles Venture is all about making animals which can be “more complex and interesting and beautiful and unique” than ones that at the moment exist, Zayner says. The Austin-based firm’s identify is a nod to a different controversial effort—the Manhattan Venture, which developed the primary atomic bomb throughout WWII.
For the previous yr, the Los Angeles Venture has been working in stealth mode whereas its five-person workforce has been experimenting on embryos from frogs, fish, hamsters, and rabbits. They’ve used Crispr to delete genes and insert new ones—the latter being extra technically tough to realize. They’re additionally testing out a lesser-known method generally known as restriction enzyme mediated integration, or REMI, for integrating new DNA into embryos. Making these modifications on the embryo stage modifications the genetic make-up of the ensuing animal.
The workforce has used Crispr so as to add a gene to rabbit embryos in order that they produce inexperienced fluorescent protein, or GFP. Zayner says they’re aiming to switch the engineered embryos to feminine rabbits this week. If all goes nicely, the corporate could have glowing child bunnies in a month. (Rabbits have a gestation interval of simply 31 to 33 days.)
They received’t be the primary glowing animals ever created. GFP is often utilized by scientists to visually monitor and monitor gene exercise or mobile processes inside an organism, usually to check illnesses. Researchers have beforehand made fluorescent rodents, monkeys, canine, cats, and rabbits, however none of those animals had been created for industrial functions. However the Los Angeles Venture is designing glowing bunnies and different animals to promote to shoppers. “I think the pet space is huge and totally undervalued,” Zayner says.
