INTRODUCING THE WORLD's FIRST GENE-EDITED LIZARD, AN ALBINO.

Scientists have been altering the genes of mice, pigs, goats, chicken and butterflies for quiet some time. But even as a Crispr, a transformative gene-editing tool, made seemingly impossible genetic alterations possible, reptiles had remained untouched. That changed with the birth of a nearly transparent Anolis lizard, the first gene-edited reptile, according to the draft of a study made public in April 2019. Ashley Rasys, a graduate student at the University of Georgia who was involved in the lizard's creation, arrived shortly after he broke through his thick shell. "I was floored", she said. "We weren't really expecting to generate an albino lizardat first", she added. 
"We can now create two to four mutant lizards from just a day's work", said Douglas Menke, the Director of the Genetics Department at the University of Georgia and another author of the study. The scientists could have altered a variety of gene, but they focused on the mutation that codes for albinism in large part because that tweak is visual. Producing an albino lizard would show their gene editing was successful.
[Courtesy: The Times of India dated 04th April, 2019 (Tuesday)].
-Challapalli Srinivas Chakravarthy-
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