Genetic Engineering and Farmed Animal Cloning

Animal husbandry for both medicinal and commercial human purposes is being intensified by two new biotechnologies. One is genetic engineering, which involves either splicing foreign genes into target animal embryos to create genetically modified animals, or deleting specific genes to create genetically modified animals. 

The other is cloning, which entails taking cells of the desired type from the animal, which may be genetically modified or knockout, or from a traditional genotype possessing traits such as rapid growth or high milk or wool production, and inserting the nuclei of these cells into the discharged oocytes of donor animals. Of the same type. Once activated by electrical fusion of the nucleus into the oocyte wall, these developing oocytes are inserted into surrogate mothers to be conceived.

Reproduction of animals reared by traditional and genetically modified methods is now in full swing in several countries. Transgenic farm animals are cloned to produce herds and herds for genetic supply; They carry several human genes that cause them to produce various new proteins in their milk, such as anti-thrombin 111 and alpha-trypsin, which the pharmaceutical industry seeks to benefit from. 

Animals are called breast bioreactors. Commercial goals are geared towards developing animals that contain less meat and healthy fats for human consumption; They have greater disease resistance, fertility, and fertility; Produce more wool or milk with a high protein content, and even hypoallergenic and baby formula that is high in human lactoferrin; Which produces less harmful environmental waste and contains lower levels of phosphorous. The pigs with the modified genes were cloned from spinach, jelly and marine worm species. 

The spinach gene reduces saturated fats and increases linoleic acid levels in body fats. The jellyfish gene makes pigs fluorescent and thus acts as a genetic marker, and the nematode gene converts omega-6 fatty acids into beneficial omega-3 fatty acids for consumers, genetically modified pigs are also created to act as organ donors for humans, produce human blood substitutes, and produce antibodies Monoclonal and polyclonal. Models of human disease have also been created in genetically modified animals, such as cloned Danish pigs, which have genes for Alzheimer's disease.


Genetic Engineering and Animal Cloning


Advocates for the creation of genetically modified and cloned animals claim that this new biotechnology is simply an extension of the natural human-directed selection process for desirable genetic traits that began thousands of years ago when animals were first domesticated. 

Some of these production traits, along with how these animals are raised on busy factory farms, are now recognized as causing a host of animal health, welfare, public health and economic problems. Critics assert that the creation of genetically modified animals and knockdowns, as well as cloning, are biologically anomalous if not obnoxious techniques the life sciences and other industries, from any sound scientific or bioethical basis, cannot claim to be merely an extension of natural selective breeding. The clones are not identical to the original base model, due to epigenetic environmental influences and maternal DNA variation.

In 2008, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration declared meat and milk from cloned cows and pigs as safe to eat as conventionally-bred animal food. But greater genetic uniformity can mean significant economic losses from diseases that become contagious when there's a lethal combination of genetic susceptibility and uniformity. 

The loss of genetic diversity in an increasingly displaced livestock population and its replacement by homozygous clones is a potential bioethical and financial issue that has not been fully addressed by governments and regulatory agencies.

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