A team of Japanese scientists recently announced that they had successfully implanted a gene into marmosets that made their skin, hair roots and blood glow green under ultraviolet light.

The scientists implanted a jellyfish gene that leads to the creation of a green fluorescent protein into marmoset embryos. When the baby marmosets were born, four of the five that had been implanted carried the gene. Most significantly, one of those eventually fathered a healthy baby that also carried the green fluorescent gene.

Why, you may wonder, would scientists want to make a glowing green monkey? What possible scientific benefit could that provide?

According to the Reuters/Yahoo News article, this is a potentially huge development in genetic research, with special potential for the medical field. It is the first time that a transgene (a gene from another type of organism) has been successfully passed to the offspring of an implanted animal.

“The birth of this transgenic marmoset baby is undoubtedly a milestone,” stem cell expert Dr. Gerald Schatten, of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and Shoukhrat Mitalipov, of Oregon Health and Sciences University, wrote in a commentary in Nature.

“Transgenic marmosets are potentially useful models for research into infectious diseases, immunology and neurological disorders, for example,” they wrote.

The scientists who successfully implanted the gene are focused on using this new information in research on currently incurable diseases such as Parkinsons disease. See the original article here.

This is just another example of the high degree of commonality in the genes of all living things, and especially between humans and primates. It’s also a great illustration of epigenetics - non-DNA memory in genes plays such an important role in how genetic information is expressed or passed along to offspring.

Results of a ten-year genetic study of Africans was published in the April 30 issue of Science Express. The research team studied DNA from 121 populations of Africans and 60 non-African populations (more than four million genotypes). They discovered that Africans are decended from 14 ancsestral populations. The scientists also revealed that there is more genetic diversity in Africa than anywhere else on the planet.

According to the study (this also squares with the work of Spencer Wells in the Genographic project), the ancestral origin of humans was most likely located in southern Africa, near the South African-Namibian broder.

This study is greater verification that humanity comes from one central location and that our genes evolved throughout our migratory journey - creating different cultures. Although we all look different, our DNA is 99.9% the same as it was during the Paleolithic/hunter-gatherer period. Because our genes have not evolved to thrive on our modern diet, this is the reason why it is so important that our nutrition comes directly from the soils of our ancestors’ migratory paths.