Trangenic Chooks

[Michaelangelica]

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Drugs Sunny-Side Up

 

Transgenic hens lay eggs rich in therapeutic proteins.

 

Scottish researchers have bred transgenic hens whose egg whites are rich in therapeutic proteins.

 

Researchers in the United Kingdom have made transgenic chickens that produce concentrated amounts of protein drugs in their egg whites.

The finding suggests that genetically engineered chickens may prove to be a cheap alternative to the large-scale manufacture of protein-based drugs, including multiple sclerosis therapies and antibodies that rally the body against cancer.

 

The transgenic-chicken work, led by Helen Sang, a researcher at the Roslin Institute in Scotland, is the first viable demonstration that chickens can be genetically engineered to make significant amounts of therapeutic proteins in the whites of their eggs.

Technology Review: Drugs Sunny-Side Up

[ronthepon]

GM hen eggs.

 

What if the eggs hatch?

[Michaelangelica]

GM hen eggs.

 

What if the eggs hatch?

 

LOL LOLOOLOlolol

 

Well :) ;)

[CraigD]

What if the eggs hatch?

The linked-to article notes “Importantly, the ability to make the drugs in the egg whites is heritable”, so it’s apparent that those eggs not harvested for the drugs are intended to be fertilized and hatched (yes, I’m farmboy enough to know the former must happen before they’re laid, thank you) to produce the next generation of drug-factory hens. They wouldn’t be very cost-effective drug factories if each generation required injecting roosters with weaken viruses and breeding them with normal hens to produce a single generation of drug-factory hens.

 

Since the human proteins expressed in low concentrations in the egg whites don’t appear to interact much with the chicks hormonal systems, I don’t believe they have much effect on them. Other than having shorter reproductive cycles (whether an intended or side effect of their genetic engineering, I couldn’t tell from the article), these chickens don’t appear notably different from ordinary ones. If they were giant, glow-in-the-dark, hyper-intelligent, excessively cannibalistic (all chickens are a bit cannibalistic), intent on wiping out humanity or dominating the world, I suspect some science journalist would have made note of that – that sort of thing really sells science articles! :)

 

Transgen chickens sound promising, but I wouldn’t count on them driving trangen goats out of the market yet – goats have several years head start on their chicken, longer lifespans, and are way more cute. ;) Both are cuter than bacteria.

 

One dark note this suggest to me is the relative ease with which researchers have been able to make a particular tissue of a particular animal express a particular protein. Dark visions of fertile trangen terrorist sparrows with heritable prion-producing intestinal linings over fields of lettuce and spinach fill me with uneasy dread. :D

[Michaelangelica]

Dark visions of fertile trangen terrorist sparrows with heritable prion-producing intestinal linings over fields of lettuce and spinach fill me with uneasy dread. ;)

Yes-problems with any science I guess.

Can be good and bad;

as well as good or bad