transgenic organism

Plant, animal, bacterium, or other living organism that has had a foreign gene added to it by means of genetic engineering. In terms of laboratory research, transgenic manipulations of organisms have become well-established scientific procedures which are finding progressively more applications in the health and food industries.

The first genetically-modified primate, a rhesus monkey, was born in January 2001. The monkey had a gene from a jellyfish, that was inserted into an unfertilized monkey egg at the Regional Primate Research Centre, Portland, Oregon, USA.