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Genetic modification is not a topic for only the vegetable field . Genetically engineered salmonhas been on the Food and Drug Administration ’s radio detection and ranging for a while , we ’ve talked about thegenetically change mosquitoesthat the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District wants to expel , and this week , I have some freakish GM - pet tidings for you .
This Little GM Piggy
Just when you remember it was good to buy a favorite slob , scientist had to go and genetically modify them . I personally do not understand the pet - cop attraction , but I bang people with Sus scrofa who are pretty well-chosen with them . Whether they ’d pay $ 1,600 for one , I ’m not sure , but the Chinese bioengineering party Beijing Genomics Institute is live on to find out .
BGI usedgene editingto produce these 33 - pound pet porkers , originally specify for the examination lab . Their scientist switch off out pieces of a pig ’s gene successiveness so the pig can not rise to what nature has fix to be the pigs ’ normal size . This is a different form of genetic alteration than that of the GE salmon cite above , which is created by injecting growth - hormone and growth - booster genes from other fish into the salmon DNA .
TheLos Angeles Timesgoes into interesting detail about what these pigs mean for GE - brute regulating in the U.S. A pig is , after all , considered a food animal as well as a positron emission tomography .
Robo-Dogs
Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health
There are two recurring nightmares that I have , and if the genetically engineered dog from this experiment were disastrous , they ’d depend just like the dogs that are in one of my nightmares . Also being presented by Taiwanese biotech researchers — this metre , the Key Laboratory of Regenerative Biology at the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health — aredouble - muscle dogs . The dogs have “ more muscles and are require to have inviolable running ability , which is good for hunting , constabulary ( military ) applications , ” tell researcher Liangxue Lai . This statement , merge with that recur incubus of mine , pee-pee me want to never slumber again .
The robo - pawl were create by damaging the myostatin gene , which regulates brawn mass . They were created with the promise of producing dogs for biomedical research , as “ dogs are very airless to human race in terms of metabolic , physiological and anatomical characteristic , ” Lai say .
Only 27 of the 65 embryos that were modified produced puppies , and only two of those showed this bivalent muscling — one of those two does n’t have staring myostatin - factor closing , so this research is far from complete .
The researchers say they have no intention of make these double - muscle dogs as pets , though they signal to the ability of biotechnology to create other factor - altered wienerwurst . Consider designer dogs of sure sizes ( a miniature - sized Great Dane ? ) and fresh cad ( that do n’t chase their derriere ? ) . inherited technology also holds the potential difference to correct hereditary unwellness in certain breeds or filiation , and dogs can be create with conditions that mime human sinewy condition ( think Parkinson ’s disease or muscular muscular dystrophy ) for future enquiry intent .
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