Humans were Selective cat farming for thousands of years to make pets more desirable. A new startup called the Los Angeles project aims to speed up this process with genetic genius to make brilliant rabbits in the dark, hypoallergenic cats and dogs, and perhaps one day, real unicorns.
The Los Angeles project is an original idea of the Biohacker Josie Zayner, which in 2017 was injected publicly with the Crispr genetic publishing tool during a conference in San Francisco and the Amestramed. “I want to help genetically changing humans to change”, ” She said at the time. She also gave herself a Fécale transplantation and a DIY vaccine And is the founder and CEO of ODIN, a company that sells genetic engineering kits at home.
Now Zayner wants to create the next generation of pets. “I think that, as a human species, it is a bit of our moral prerogative to level the animals,” she said.
Co -founded with the Biotechnology entrepreneur Cathy Tie, a former Thiel scholarship holder, the Los Angeles project is to make animals that are “more complex and interesting and beautiful and unique” than those who exist today, says Zayner. The name of the company based in Austin is a nod to another controversial effort – the Manhattan project, which developed the first atomic bomb during the Second World War.
In the past year, the Los Angeles project operates in stealth mode while its team of five has experienced embryos of frogs, fish, hamsters and rabbits. They used CRISPR to remove the genes and insert new ones – the latter being more difficult to make. They also test a less known technique known as the integration mediated by the restriction enzyme, or Remi, for the integration of a new DNA into the embryos. Make these changes to the embryo modifies the genetic composition of the resulting animal.
The team used CRISPR to add a gene to rabbit embryos so that they produce green fluorescent proteins, or GFP. Zayner says they aim to transfer engineering embryos to female rabbits this week. If all goes well, the company will have brilliant rabbits in a month. (Rabbits have a gestation period of only 31 to 33 days.)
They will not be the first brilliant animals ever created. GFP is commonly used by scientists to visually monitor and monitor gene activity or cellular processes within an organism, often to study diseases. The researchers have already made fluorescent rodents, monkeys, dogs, cats and rabbits, but none of these animals were created for commercial purposes. But the Los Angeles project designs brilliant rabbits and other animals for sale to consumers. “I think the pet space is enormous and completely undervalued,” explains Zayner.
