{"id":14164,"date":"2025-02-19T19:05:48","date_gmt":"2025-02-19T19:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=14164"},"modified":"2025-02-19T19:05:48","modified_gmt":"2025-02-19T19:05:48","slug":"your-next-pet-could-be-a-glowing-rabbit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=14164","title":{"rendered":"Your Next Pet Could Be a Glowing Rabbit"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Humans have been<\/span> selectively breeding cats and dogs for thousands of years to make more desirable pets. A new startup called the Los Angeles Project aims to speed up that process with genetic engineering to make glow-in-the-dark rabbits, hypoallergenic cats and dogs, and possibly, one day, actual unicorns.<\/p>\n

The Los Angeles Project is the brainchild of biohacker Josie Zayner, who in 2017 publicly injected herself with the gene-editing tool Crispr<\/a> during a conference in San Francisco and livestreamed it. \u201cI want to help humans genetically modify themselves,\u201d she said at the time<\/a>. She\u2019s also given herself a fecal transplant<\/a> and a DIY Covid vaccine<\/a> and is the founder and CEO of The Odin, a company that sells home genetic-engineering kits.<\/p>\n

Now, Zayner wants to create the next generation of pets. \u201cI think, as a human species, it\u2019s kind of our moral prerogative to level up animals,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Cofounded with biotech entrepreneur Cathy Tie, a former Thiel Fellow, the Los Angeles Project is all about making animals that are \u201cmore complex and interesting and beautiful and unique\u201d than ones that currently exist, Zayner says. The Austin-based company\u2019s name is a nod to another controversial effort\u2014the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bomb during WWII.<\/p>\n

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