How Much Is The Glowing Monkey In The Window? Matthew Herper, Forbes.com, 02.02.01, 12:35 PM ET NEW YORK - The thought of glowing monkeys created by inserting a jellyfish gene has some animal-rights types howling. They shouldn't worry so much: Experimentation on transgenic primates will be kept in check by simple economics. A transgenic mouse, for example, costs researchers about $170, ten times the price of a normal mouse. Glowing monkeys? They could cost $300,000 each. Alba, Eduardo Kac's transgenic bunny. Photo by Chrystelle Fontaine. Courtesy of Julia Friedman Gallery. Animals that glow green in blue light have existed for years. This year, Chicago artist Eduardo Kac had a glowing bunny (pictured) produced by French scientists at his request. Transgenic animals as a group are two decades old. The first scientist to try to make a glowing monkey, Gerald Schatten of Oregon Health Sciences University, says he didn't think his work was going to be noticed by the media. It was, however: Schatten's announcement in the Jan. 12 issue of Science magazine that a transgenic monkey had been born made headlines. That monkey, ANDi (backwards for inserted DNA), doesn't glow. The gene for glowing is there, but for some reason it doesn't produce the protein that actually glows. Schatten estimates it cost $300,000 to make him. That's 80 times what some researchers pay for a new monkey, according to primate researcher Stuart Zola of the University of California, Santa Barbara. It wasn't easy, either; Schatten and his team inserted the glowing gene into 224 monkey eggs to get one ANDi. Schatten says costs will go down in the future. That means transgenic monkeys cost about as much as transgenic goats, made frequently by companies like Canada's Nexia Biosciences and Framingham, Mass.-based Genzyme Transgenics (nasdaq: GZTC - news - people). But there is a huge financial incentive to make transgenic goats that does not exist with primates. Goats can be used to make certain drugs for 50% to 70% less than other available methods that require stainless steel bioreactors filled with genetically altered hamster cells. In contrast, transgenic monkeys would be used mostly for experiments and drug testing. By the time such primates are readily available, it is likely that technologies like computer modeling, and cheaper animals like mice, will be much more cost-effective. Transgenic Animals And Their Cost Lab mouse: $17 Transgenic mouse (glowing): $143 - $193 Unmodified goat: $700 - $1,400 Transgenic goat: $100,000 - $350,000 courtesy of Genzyme Transgenics Normal monkey: $3700 Transgenic monkey: $300,000 courtesy of Oregon Health Sciences University Sources: Genzyme Transgenics; The Jackson Laboratory; Gerald Schatten, Oregon Health Sciences University; Jeffrey Turner, CEO, Nexia Biosciences; Stuart Zola, University of California in San Diego.

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