People were Cats and dogs selectively breed for thousands of years to make more desirable pets. A new startup called the Los Angeles project is aimed at speeding up the process with genetic engineering to make glow-in-the-dark rabbits, hypoallergen gene cats and dogs, and possibly one day, real unicorns.

The Los Angeles project is the brainchild of Biohacker Josie Zayner, who in 2017 in public with the Gen Reditation instrument Crispr injected during a conference in San Francisco and brought it alive. “I want to help people change themselves genetically,” she said at the time. She also gave herself a fecal transplant and a DIY Covid vaccine and is the founder and CEO of the ODIN, a company that sells home genetic engineering.

Now Zayner wants to create the next generation of pets. “I think as a human species it is a kind of moral privilege to level animals,” she says.

The Los Angeles project, which, together with the Biotech entrepreneur Cathy Tie, a former Thiel -Fellow, is about making animals that are ‘more complicated and interesting and beautiful and unique’ than currently exist, Zayner says. The name of the Austin-based company is a nod to another controversial effort-the Manhattan project, which developed the first atomic bomb during World War II.

Photo: Los Angeles Project

Over the past year, the Los Angeles project in Stealth mode has been working, while the five-person team is experimenting on embryos of frogs, fish, hamsters and rabbits. They used CRISPR to erase genes and insert new ones – the latter is more technically difficult to achieve. They also test a lesser-known technique, known as restrictive enzyme-mediated integration, or Remi, for integrating new DNA into embryos. Do these modifications at the embryo level change the genetic composition of the resulting animal.

The team used CRISPR to add a gene to the rabbit embryos so they produce green fluorescent protein or GFP. Zayner says they intend to transfer the designed embryos to female rabbits this week. If all goes well, the company will have glowing baby houses within a month. (Rabbits have a pregnancy period of only 31 to 33 days.)

It will not be the first glowing animals ever created. GFP is regularly used by scientists to visually detect and monitor any activity or cellular processes within an organism, often to study diseases. Researchers have previously made fluorescent rodents, monkeys, dogs, cats and rabbits, but none of these animals were created for commercial purposes. But the Los Angeles project designs glowing bunnies and other animals to sell to consumers. “I think the pet space is big and completely undervalued,” Zayner says.