For livestock owners
"Clones are genetic copies of an animal," said Dr. Larisa Rudenko, a molecular biologist. "They are similar to identical twins, but at different birth times." Cloning can be considered an extension of assisted reproductive techniques that livestock keepers have used for centuries, such as artificial insemination, embryo transfer, and in vitro fertilization.
Imagine a scene where a perfect cow has produced gallons and gallons of the best milk over the years. She is healthy and strong, and very suitable for the climate where she lives. The farmer relied on this cow to maintain the development of the farm during lean times, but now, she is old and her life is about to end. The farmer can choose to clone his precious cow, breed and retain her offspring, and quickly introduce natural positive characteristics into the herd; whereas with traditional breeding methods, it would take several years to achieve these same improvements.
Farmers can also use cloning to produce meat of more uniform quality. Take a boar as an example, it sires offspring that mature quickly and provide lean meat time and time again. If a farmer has several such boars, his production efficiency will be doubled, and the meat will be consistent and of high quality.
The History of Livestock Cloning Study
The main purpose of cattle and sheep embryo cloning is to use transgenic technology to transfer reconstructed nuclei into recipient cells to improve disease resistance and the production performance of these domestic animals. In 1987, R.S.Prather transferred the nucleus of a cattle embryonic cell to an enucleated fertilized egg and successfully obtained the first embryonic cloned cattle. In 1991, the world's first embryo-cloned goat was born. In vitro micromanipulation of swine embryos is more difficult, and the technical difficulty of embryo cloning is higher than that of cattle and sheep. In 2000, Polejaeva used mature oocytes in vivo as a recipient, cytoplasmic granular cells as donors to construct embryos, and successfully obtained the first somatic clonedswine.
At present, with the development and maturity of cloning technology, somatic cell cloning has become increasingly important in the field of livestock breeding. More and more livestock owners choose to breed excellent livestock by cloning in order to maximize their profits.
The Application of Livestock Cloning
Livestock embryo cloning research has important significance and broad application prospects in breed improvement, functional animal product production, drug screening, and human disease model construction.
In the actual production of animal husbandry, embryo cloning technology can be used to screen and obtain livestock with excellent traits, such as introducing specific genes to improve pork production efficiency and pork quality. In medicine, the brain structure and function of mammals are relatively similar to that of human beings. Research on cloning embryos can provide animal models for the mechanism and treatment of human diseases. For example, swine have a high similarity to humans in their physiological and anatomical structures. Gene modification technology can be used to construct cloned swine that produce cystic organ fibrosis for the study of human-related diseases. At the same time, specific animals can be used to produce specific drugs, such as animal cloning and transgenic technology are applied to construct transgenic animals that replicate the specific expression of mammary glands, and obtain human proteins from their milk.
After years of detailed research and analysis on animal cloning and related food safety, scientists have concluded that there is no significant difference between healthy cloned farm animals and healthy animals bred by traditional methods. Meat and milk from clones ofcattle, swine and goats, as well as the offspring of clones from any species traditionally consumed as food, are as safe to eat as food from conventionally bred animals. BioVenic's cloning services for other animals can help the breeders extend their prize livestock's life.
References
- US Food and Drug Administration. "A primer on cloning and its use in livestock operations." (2009).
- Ibtisham, F., et al. "Animal cloning applications and issues." Russian Journal of Genetics 53.9 (2017): 965-971.