Genetically Altered Animals Soon To Impact You

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Jul 14, 2010, 6:41:59 PM7/14/10

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Genetically Altered Animals Soon To Impact You
Unless you live in Europe, your last meal probably contained genetically modified ingredients - 80 per cent of soya grown worldwide is now genetically engineered, for instance. Yet while modified plants are rapidly taking over the planet's farms, the same cannot be said for GM animals. There's the occasional flurry of reports about glowing rabbits or marmosets, but no one is yet eating beef from bioengineered bullocks. The main reason is that the genetic engineering of animals - with the exception of mice - has been a slow, tedious process needing a lot of money and not a little luck. Behind the scenes, though, a quiet revolution has been taking place. Thanks to a set of new tricks and tools, modifying animals is becoming a lot easier and more precise. That is not only going to transform research, it could also transform the meat and eggs you eat and the milk you drink. The first transgenic animals were produced by injecting DNA into eggs, implanting the eggs in animals and then waiting weeks or months to see if any offspring had incorporated the extra DNA. Often fewer than 1 in 100 had, making this a long, expensive process. "That's just really inefficient," says Scott Fahrenkrug, a geneticist at the University of Minnesota in St Paul.