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Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Genetically modified cows produce 'human' milk

Genetically modified cows produce 'human' milk
Scientists have created genetically modified cattle that produce "human" milk in a bid to make cows' milk more nutritious.

Researchers say they are able to create cows that produce milk containing a human protein called lysozyme
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
2 Apr 2011
telegraph.co.uk

The scientists have successfully introduced human genes into 300 dairy cows to produce milk with the same properties as human breast milk.
Human milk contains high quantities of key nutrients that can help to boost the immune system of babies and reduce the risk of infections.
The scientists behind the research believe milk from herds of genetically modified cows could provide an alternative to human breast milk and formula milk for babies, which is often criticised as being an inferior substitute.

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They hope genetically modified dairy products from herds of similar cows could be sold in supermarkets. The research has the backing of a major biotechnology company.
The work is likely to inflame opposition to GM foods. Critics of the technology and animal welfare groups reacted angrily to the research, questioning the safety of milk from genetically modified animals and its effect on the cattle's health.

But Professor Ning Li, the scientist who led the research and director of the State Key Laboratories for AgroBiotechnology at the China Agricultural University insisted that the GM milk would be as safe to drink as milk from ordinary dairy cows.
He said: "The milk tastes stronger than normal milk.

“We aim to commercialize some research in this area in coming three years. For the “human-like milk”, 10 years or maybe more time will be required to finally pour this enhanced milk into the consumer’s cup.”
China is now leading the way in research on genetically modified food and the rules on the technology are more relaxed than those in place in Europe.

The researchers used cloning technology to introduce human genes into the DNA of Holstein dairy cows before the genetically modified embryos were implanted into surrogate cows.
Writing in the scientific peer-reviewed journal Public Library of Science One, the researchers said they were able to create cows that produced milk containing a human protein called lysozyme,
Lysozyme is an antimicrobial protein naturally found in large quantities in human breast milk. It helps to protect infants from bacterial infections during their early days of life.

They created cows that produce another protein from human milk called lactoferrin, which helps to boost the numbers of immune cells in babies. A third human milk protein called alpha-lactalbumin was also produced by the cows.

The scientists also revealed at an exhibition at the China Agricultural University that they have boosted milk fat content by around 20 per cent and have also changed the levels of milk solids, making it closer to the composition of human milk as well as having the same immune-boosting properties.
Professor Li and his colleagues, who have been working with the Beijing GenProtein Biotechnology Company, said their work has shown it was possible to "humanise" cows milk.

In all, the scientists said they have produced a herd of around 300 cows that are able to produce human-like milk.
The transgenic animals are physically identical to ordinary cows.
Writing in the journal, Professor Li said: "Our study describes transgenic cattle whose milk offers the similar nutritional benefits as human milk.
"The modified bovine milk is a possible substitute for human milk. It fulfilled the conception of humanising the bovine milk."

Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph, he added the “human-like milk” would provide “much higher nutritional content”. He said they had managed to produce three generations of GM cows but for commercial production there would need to be large numbers of cows produced.
He said: “Human milk contains the ‘just right’ proportions of protein, carbohydrates, fats, minerals, and vitamins for an infant’s optimal growth and development.

“As our daily food, the cow’s milk provided us the basic source of nutrition. But the digestion and absorption problems made it not the perfect food for human being."
The researchers also insist having antimicrobial proteins in the cows milk can also be good for the animals by helping to reduce infections of their udders.

Genetically modified food has become a highly controversial subject and currently they can only be sold in the UK and Europe if they have passed extensive safety testing.
The consumer response to GM food has also been highly negative, resulting in many supermarkets seeking to source products that are GM free.

Campaigners claim GM technology poses a threat to the environment as genes from modified plants can get into wild plant populations and weeds, while they also believe there are doubts about the safety of such foods.
Scientists insist genetically modified foods are unlikely to pose a threat to food safety and in the United States consumers have been eating genetically modified foods for more decades.
However, during two experiments by the Chinese researchers, which resulted in 42 transgenic calves being born, just 26 of the animals survived after ten died shortly after birth, most with gastrointestinal disease, and a further six died within six months of birth.

Researchers accept that the cloning technology used in genetic modification can affect the development and survival of cloned animals, although the reason why is not well understood.
A spokesman for the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals said the organisation was "extremely concerned" about how the GM cows had been produced.
She said: "Offspring of cloned animals often suffer health and welfare problems, so this would be a grave concern.

"Why do we need this milk – what is it giving us that we haven't already got."
Helen Wallace, director of biotechnology monitoring group GeneWatch UK, said: "We have major concerns about this research to genetically modify cows with human genes.

"There are major welfare issues with genetically modified animals as you get high numbers of still births.
"There is a question about whether milk from these cows is going to be safe from humans and it is really hard to tell that unless you do large clinical trials like you would a drug, so there will be uncertainty about whether it could be harmful to some people.

"Ethically there are issues about mass producing animals in this way."
Professor Keith Campbell, a biologist at the University of Nottingham works with transgenic animals, said: "Genetically modified animals and plants are not going to be harmful unless you deliberately put in a gene that is going to be poisonous. Why would anyone do that in a food?
"Genetically modified food, if done correctly, can provide huge benefit for consumers in terms of producing better products."

Chimeric Monkeys With 6 Genomes Are Scientific First

Baby Monkeys With 6 Genomes Are Scientific First
There are no plans to create human chimeras, a researcher emphasized. This research by itself should help with biomedical research more relevant to humans
By Jeanna Bryner , Stephanie Pappas and LiveScience | Friday, January 6, 2012
Scientific American

Roku and Hex, two of the world's first chimeric primates.

They look like ordinary baby rhesus macaques, but Hex, Roku and Chimero are the world's first chimeric monkeys, each with cells from the genomes of as many as six rhesus monkeys.

Until now research on so-called chimeric animals, or those that have cells with different genomes, has been limited to mice; a recent procedure produced mice using cells from two dads.

The researchers turned to monkeys for more insight into the capabilities of embryonic stem cells. Most experiments on stem cell therapies are based on mice, and the researchers wanted to understand whether primate embryonic stem cells respond the same way as those of mice do.

To create the chimeric monkeys, researchers essentially glued together cells from individual rhesus monkey embryos and then implanting these mixed embryos into mama monkeys.

The key was mixing cells from very early-stage embryos, or blastocysts, that consisted of just two to four cells – each one of the cells still totipotent, capable of transforming into a whole animal as well as the placenta and other life-sustaining tissues. (This is in contrast to pluripotent stem cells, which can differentiate into any tissue type in the body, but not certain embryonic tissues or entire organisms.)

"The cells never fuse, but they stay together and work together to form tissues and organs," said Shoukhrat Mitalipov of the Oregon National Primate Research Center at Oregon Health & Science University. "The possibilities for science are enormous."

Try, try again

The researchers first tried creating chimeric monkeys using the process for chimeric mice. In this procedure, embryonic stem cells are injected into a host embryo after they have been cultured for as long as decades.

These stem cells will mix with the host embryo's cells to produce tissues and organs and ultimately offspring. When these offspring are mated, the resulting offspring have cells derived solely from the implanted stem cells. If you were to pluck two cells from a chimeric mouse's body, you could get two different genomes – complete sets of chromosomes and genetic information.

But the methods that work to create chimeric mice failed in rhesus monkeys, leading to offspring with cells only from the host embryo.

"Unfortunately that didn't work," Mitalipov told LiveScience in a telephone interview. "We produced offspring that way and they didn't show any contribution of stem cells." The stem cells seemed to have gotten lost somewhere, he said.

The researchers guessed that the culturing somehow had changed these embryonic stem cells. So they recovered stem cells from an embryo's inner cell mass (rather than from the freezer after being cultured) and, without culturing them, injected the stem cells into a host embryo.

Rather than one chimeric monkey infant, the result was two separate fetuses — twins.

Finally, the researchers hit on a successful method, using early blastocysts that had split into no more than four separate cells. They took individual cells out of these clumps and aggregated them back together, mixing and matching between three and six individuals to create 29 new blastocysts. The researchers picked the 14 strongest-looking of them and implanted them in five surrogate mother monkeys.

All five got pregnant. Researchers terminated the pregnancies of three of them to test the fetuses for chimerism, and they found it. Soon after, the remaining two monkeys delivered twins (named Roku and Hex for the Japanese and Greek words for "six") and a singleton, Chimero. All appear male, though testing on their cells reveals that they also contain individual female genomes.

Growing up chimeric

The monkeys were delivered by C-section. Their mothers rejected them, probably in response to the nonnatural method used to deliver them, so now they are being raised by a foster mama.

Researchers aren't yet sure whether Roku, Hex and Chimero will be able to reproduce. It takes rhesus macaques four to five years to reach sexual maturity.

There are no plans to create human chimeras and no need to, Mitalipov emphasized. This research by itself should help scientists in conducting biomedical research more relevant to humans, he said.

Chimeric mice, for instance, are used to produce genetically engineered "knock-out" mice that carry deletions of important genes. In that way, researchers can see firsthand what genes do or don't do.

The results may be useful in stem cell therapy, Mitalipov said. Researchers believe that stem cells cultured in Petri dishes could be transplanted into adult patients to treat conditions such as paralysis or Parkinson's disease.

"But this is based on mouse models," Mitalipov said. "We didn't know whether primates have this capacity."

The chimeric monkey study, reported today (Jan. 5) in the journal Cell, shows that primate cultured stem cells probably have some potential to differentiate, but they aren't comparable to in-vivo stem cells, or stem cells produced in the body, Mitalipov said.

"We cannot model everything in the mouse," Mitalipov said. "If we want to move stem cell therapies from the lab to clinics and from the mouse to humans, we need to understand what these primate cells can and can't do. We need to study them in humans, including human embryos."

Even though the researchers found success without culturing, cultured cells shouldn't be written off, said Richard Behringer, a geneticist at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. The reason the cells didn't work in monkeys may be due to something in the laboratory process, not because of the cells themselves, Behringer told LiveScience.

"We know so little about the early embryology of our cells," Behringer said. "We know about the fertilization to the blastocyst stage because you can do that in vitro, but after that there's very little known about human embryology — this is when a woman may not even know she's pregnant. Having the monkey model is useful to understand the early embryonic development, where the monkey can stand in for the human."

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World's first chimeric monkeys
Researchers in Oregon have produced the world's first chimeric monkeys. Unlike naturally-conceived animals whose individual cells contain the same genetic structure, the monkeys are composed of a mixture of cells containing different genomes. Scientists have conducted research with chimeric mice for many years, but the primate model gives scientists new insight into the study of numerous diseases that affect humans. The paper was released on Thursday, January 5, in the online journal ''Cell''.

Worlds First Mixed-Embryo Monkeys have been Born in the U.S.
Researchers merged cells from six different embryos, in effect advancing medical research.
Scientists in Oregon created melded primates by altering the method used to make mice.
These researchers combined cells from a early stage known as totipotent, at this stage they can actually rise
a animal, placenta and other life-dependent tissues.
Embryos of Primates won't allow stem cells to be comined, as with mice.

Lead researcher Shoukhrat Mitalipov representing Oregon National Primate Research Center at Oregon Health and Science University said "The cells never fuse, but they stay together and work together to form tissues and organs,..The possibilities for science are enormous."
The experiment produced three healthy male rhesus monkeys with gene traits from all of the individual embryos.

Friday, December 16, 2011

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