Who needs booster shots? Preventing communicable diseases may someday be as simple as eating sushi. Zhiyuan Gong, a biologist at the National University of Singapore, says he's genetically modified zebra fish to produce a hepatitis B vaccine. The catch: Heat destroys a key antibody-inducing protein, so the flesh must be ingested raw.
Gong knows his way around zebra fish. His GloFish, sold in the US as a pet, is a transgenic with glowing proteins - red, green, or blue. The hep-B variety is the same kind of bioreactor, only it codes for vaccine instead, he says. It's also cheaper to breed seafood than to make drugs.
But don't whip out the wasabi just yet. Even if tests go well, regulators may not bite - California banned the GloFish, even after deciding it posed no threat to the environment. It also tastes bad. Scientists may be able to modify tilapia or salmon. Arigato, doc.
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