NEW YORK, Dec. 25 (UPI) -- Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer might emerge from the Christmas Eve tale into reality someday, thanks to genetic engineering and fluorescent proteins from coral reefs, scientists report.

It would take about $250,000 "for a 60 percent chance of finding the genes in the reindeer, given two years of dedicated effort," marine molecular biologist Mikhail Matz of the Whitney Laboratory of the University of Miami in St. Augustine, Fla., told United Press International. "From there you might take another 10 years to breed. Of course, there will be lots of problems with animal protection people."

Matz and colleagues discovered a red fluorescent protein while in Moscow in 1999 from sea corals collected from private aquaria. Experts think these glowing biochemicals, in their natural state, cultivate the proper light ambience for photosynthetic algae living inside the blind corals, which generate more than 90 percent of the energy balance of their hosts.

When asked the light-hearted question about using the protein to create reindeer with glowing noses, Matz said the easiest way to make a Rudolph would be "to simply paint the nose. If you want to do it fancily, you could paint the nose with some virus that infects the genes in the nose with the protein."

Such viral paint "is just a fancy way of painting, however, and will not be transmitted to offspring," Matz cautioned. To create herds of red-nosed reindeer, scientists would have to rewrite their genetic codes. Would-be Rudolph-makers would have to find genes specific to reindeer nose cells to keep the gene for the red glow confined there.

"Making the entire deer glow red would not be a problem, actually," Matz said. Scientists at the University of Hawaii made green fluorescent mice with jellyfish proteins in 1999.

Deer geneticist Loren Skow, of Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine in College Station, said although at present nobody is mapping the reindeer genetic code, he expects it would turn out "quite similar" to cows, sheep and goats. One of their genome projects "would serve the deer geneticist very well."

When reindeer nose genes are identified, scientists then could insert the glow gene into sperm, egg or embryonic cells "so that all the cells in those deer that descend from the genetically modified cells glow red or green or blue or whatever your favorite color is," Skow said.

Reindeer are far from ideal experimental subjects, however. "They cannot be maintained in the lab, cannot be bred in the lab, and the generation time to adulthood is too long for efficient practices," Matz said. "I think it's simply undoable because nobody will allow transgenic experiments in reindeer. Not in this country, at least."

Asked whether scientists might one day try to genetically engineer a flying reindeer, Matz responded: "When there is funding for a flying pig, then I'll apply for a ... reindeer. I'll make a very convincing proposal."