Quote Originally Posted by Jyson View Post
I completely agree, I am not entirely sure about how I feel about this either and to be honest I see no real point in it. What is the benefit of making a mouse flourescent?
epifluorescense is useful in visualizing live specimens' functioning parts. You can add the protein coding sequence to introns that code for blood cells, bone cells, skin cells, fat cells - whatever and that's where you'll find the GFP (Green Fluorescent Protein) once the animal in question fully develops. Some of the "neon mice" on that page have what look like glowing skeletons - that's because the GFP sequence was put into a bone coding region and it's the bones that are glowing as a result.

Doing this allows function of live cells to be viewed and teaches us more about the animal in question and ourselves as, for example, muscle cells in mice are in a lot of ways similar to muscle cells in humans.