Scientists have mastered the technology of creating genetically modified cows using genomic editing.
Since the birth of Dolly the sheep (she was born in 1996), cloning methods have gone a long way. This is already a commercial technology by which pet owners can obtain a complete genetic copy of their deceased pet. Genetic copying is widely used in service dog breeding to replicate animals with unique data. Race horses and camels are also cloned, which is understandable given the size of the prize money at prestigious competitions. And the mammoth cloning project rests only on the problem of obtaining a suitable cell from samples found in permafrost.
Gradually, from the category of exoticism, such experiments move into a practical plane. Cloning is expected to revolutionize animal husbandry by allowing the creation and replication of pigs and cows with unique production characteristics. An important step in this direction was made by Russian scientists of the Federal Scientific Center for Livestock - VIZh named after Academician L. K. Ernst.
For the first time in Russia, the team of the Laboratory of Experimental Embryology under the leadership of Galina Sinigina, Candidate of Biological Sciences, obtained a viable calf by the method of somatic cloning. The method allows you to quickly and reliably fix in the offspring the unique characteristics of individuals that are of great economic importance. Its essence is to replace the nucleus of somatic cells: scientists remove their own genetic material from cows' eggs and transfer nuclei of somatic cells from a genetically modified “reference” cell population. As a result of such manipulations, scientists obtained several cell embryos, one of which gave birth to a healthy heifer. Genomic analysis confirmed the complete identity of the genotype of the obtained heifer and the cell line.
The team of the Laboratory of Experimental Embryology under the leadership of Galina Sinigina, Candidate of Sciences in Biology, received a viable calf for the first time in Russia. Photo: rfbr.ru
The researchers note that the transplantation of somatic cell nuclei is the main technological platform in the world today for obtaining genetically modified cattle by the method of genomic editing. Therefore, a successful experiment demonstrates the technological readiness of Russian scientists to create lines of farm animals using the method of genomic editing, “Such experiments show that all the complex and expensive work to improve the working qualities of a future animal (milk composition, resistance to diseases, etc.) we can actually conduct laboratories in a test tube,” says Natalia Zinovieva, Director of the VIZH, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
YAROSLAV KOROBATOV
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