Genetically modified rabbit 'stable'

SHANGHAI: A rabbit cloned by scientists here and touted as the world's first to possess a foreign gene that can help in research on human diseases, has successfully survived for three months, researchers said on Tuesday.

Cloned by a team at the Shanghai Jiaotong University medical school, the genetically modified animal, which carries a green fluorescent protein, was confirmed to have passed molecular biological identification and is currently in a stable condition at the medical school.

The green protein was extracted from a type of jellyfish and planted into a single rabbit cell, which grew into an embryo. This was then transplanted into a surrogate mother rabbit.