Few of us have thought of the idea of glowing rabbits, but that’s exactly what Josie Zaynor is doing.
Zaynor is the main character in a recent Wired article, which was written by Emily Mullin.
Mullin joined The Show to discuss her very enigmatic subject.
Full conversation
EMILY: MULLIN: You might remember Josie Zaynor from a few years back when in 2017, she publicly injected herself with CRISPR during a biohacking conference in San Francisco, and she's also done some other stunts like giving herself a fecal transplant and a DIY COVID vaccine that she made in her garage, I think.
SAM DINGMAN: So very uncontroversial person, it sounds like.
MULLIN: Yes, totally. [LAUGHS] She's really pushed the boundaries of biotech and biohacking.
DINGMAN: So we today are talking about a startup that she has been running in stealth mode until it started being written about in the pages of publications like Wired, called the Los Angeles Project. Tell us what the Los Angeles Project is up to.
MULLIN: Yeah, so the Los Angeles Project is all about making animals that are, in her words, more complex and interesting and beautiful and unique than ones that currently exist.
So the first project they're working on is a glowing bunny rabbit.
DINGMAN: Yeah. So before we get to the glowing bunny rabbit, can you just help us understand this CRISPR that Josie injected herself with and that she and the other folks at the Los Angeles Project are using to make these edits. What exactly is it, and what exactly does it allow biohackers like her to do?
MULLIN: Yeah, so CRISPR is short for clustered regularly interest-based short palindromic repeats. Say that three times fast.
DINGMAN: [LAUGHS] I'm impressed you said it once.
MULLIN: It is a genome-editing technology. And yeah, it's been around for a little over 10 years now. And CRISPR has become this incredible laboratory tool used by scientists to tinker with genes in plants, in animals, in cells of all kinds. And the reason why they are editing the animals at the embryo level is so that any change that they make with the gene editing will be present not only in that offspring, but if those animals go on to breed and have babies, those genetic edicts will be carried on to the next generation. So this is called germline editing.
DINGMAN: OK. So let's come back to the glowing rabbit. One of the things that you point out in your piece is that it's not exactly new for scientists who are studying animals to make certain parts of those animals light up.
MULLIN: Yeah, totally. And you're right that these aren't the first glowing animals ever created. So the edit that they're making here is that they're adding a gene called GFP, which is commonly used by scientists to sort of visually track and monitor gene activity, a certain cellular process within our organism. You know, often to study diseases.
The difference here is that the Los Angeles Project wants to gene edit animals with interesting characteristics that don't currently exist, so that people can have these animals as pets. And yeah, the glowing bunny is, I think a little bit of a gimmick, but also to kind of get people thinking about what is possible with this technology.
So for instance, one of the things they want to do is make a hypoallergenic cat — a truly hypoallergenic cat. I myself am highly allergic to cats. They are very cute animals and I would love to just be able to put my face in one and cuddle a cat, but I can't. … The glowing bunny, a lot of people would think, “Whoa, like, why do that?” But on the other hand, a lot of people would buy a hypoallergenic cat. So, I don't know, where the line here is?
DINGMAN: It seems like that's the question that Josie Zaynor is really interested in. In the piece, she referred to the exciting opportunities available in, I think what she said is the “pet space.” Which is a way that entrepreneurs often talk about new markets that might be interesting business opportunities — like the grocery space is being upended by things like Instacart and that sort of thing. But here, the pet space is not just finding new ways of selling widgets, it's new ways of selling animals that — to go back to what you were pointing out earlier — are made.
What are some of the other concerns that people have raised about this kind of genetically engineered animal experimentation?
MULLIN: It's interesting because humans have been breeding dogs and cats and lots of other animals for hundreds, probably thousands of years. And there are all sorts of animals now — I'm thinking specifically of dogs and cats — that have health problems because of humans selectively breeding them.
DINGMAN: Without CRISPR.
MULLING: Right, without CRISPR, exactly. So we have flat-faced dogs, like the French bulldog that have these breathing impairments. Other dogs have joint issues, eye problems, hearing loss. There's certain cats that have bone and skeletal problems due to selective breeding. So, this is not a new issue per se. And I think it does depend on what the edit is, right?
I mean, I asked the company, “What would be an ethical edit versus an unethical edit?” And they had to think about that for a little bit. And I think if a company does succeed at creating a glowing rabbit, for instance, and unveils that to the public, the public, I think, is going to kind of have to decide here about whether this is OK or not. And whether they're going to buy this or not. I mean, there are all sorts of exotic pets that currently exist, that CRISPR technology, gene-editing technology kind of adds on another ethical layer, I guess.
DINGMAN: Yeah. What you're saying, Emily, also makes me think about a point that you make in the piece, which is that the Los Angeles Project, which — somewhat confusingly — is based in Austin, Texas, the name seems to be an allusion to the Manhattan Project. Which was, of course, the project that led to the development of the first atomic bomb.
MULLIN: Yes, I think that name was quite intentional.
DINGMAN: All right, well, Emily Mullin is a staff writer at Wired magazine, and she wrote the piece that we've been discussing, “Your next pet could be a glowing rabbit.” Emily, thank you so much.
MULLIN: Thank you.
