Biologist Yin Zhi felt like a proud new father this winter when bright green, genetically-engineered piglets were born at his university, heralding a new chapter in Chinese science.

The second-in-command of a research team at the Northeast Agricultural University had spent three days in a freezing stable waiting for the sow to deliver, so excited he could hardly sleep.

"I don't have kids, but it must be like becoming a dad for the first time," said Yin, describing his feelings when the piglets turned out to be fluorescent green like their mother.

"It was the fruit of two years of work," he said.

Yin's university, located in China's far northeastern city of Harbin and rarely the centre of public attention, has become the focus of enormous interest thanks to the genetic engineering work.

Fame first came a year ago when the sow was born fluorescent green all over, even her tongue.

Her offspring, the newly-born piglets, only show patches of green when held up against ultraviolet light, but to the scientists they are more interesting because this is a trait passed on from one generation to the next.

"We plan to match them with florescent piglets from another batch of piglets we expect soon. That way, the third generation may be more fluorescent," said Yin.

Virtually unlimited possibilities

Fluorescent pigs are nothing new — they were bred in the United States early this decade. But replicating previous experiments is an important step on the road to real innovation — and developments that could make money.

The researchers manipulated just one gene to make the pigs fluorescent, and there are 20 000 others genes to move on to.

This means the commercial and scientific possibilities are virtually unlimited, said Liu Zhonghua, the US-educated scientist who heads the team.

"Research into pigs is important because they are vessels for the generation of organs," he said.

"For the foreseeable future, it will not be possible to breed organs outside living bodies, and we need to use pigs' bodies for this purpose."

A growing giant

China is rapidly increasing its spending on research and development, with funding growing by an annual average of 18 percent over the past five years, according to Science, a US journal.

By contrast, the United States, Japan and the European Union have seen annual average growth of 2.9 percent in the same period, the journal said.

"The rapid increase ... reflects a clear understanding by China's top political leadership that science and technology are critical to their nation's future," the journal said in an editorial.

Another reason why China is bursting onto the stage of science is the efforts of people such as Liu.

Liu (35) had a stable job in US academia, but decided recently to return to China because, he said, he felt more could be done for less money.

"This project has cost 1.2 million yuan ($170 000) from start to finish. If it was the United States, it would have been many times more expensive," he said.

"Everything is cheaper here, including my own salary."

AFP