Gene-engineered cattle resist BSE

JAPAN - US and Japanese scientists reported on Sunday that they had used genetic engineering to produce cattle that resist mad cow disease.
calendar icon 8 January 2007
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They hope the cattle can be the source of herds that can provide dairy products, gelatin and other products free of the brain-destroying disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE.

Writing in the journal Nature Biotechnology, the researchers said their cattle were healthy at the age of 20 months, and sperm from the males made normal embryos that were used to impregnate cows, although it is not certain yet that they could breed normally.

The cattle lack the nervous system prions, a type of protein, that cause BSE and other related diseases such as scrapie in sheep and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, known as CJD, in humans, the researchers said.

Source: Daily Times

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