Thursday, September 17, 2020

Animals that Pass Down Other's Genes and Not Their Own?!

 


According to a Times of India article, team of scientists led by Jon Oatley used a gene editing tool to create "surrogate dads", or males of an animal species, specifically goats, pigs, cattle, and mice, that are originally sterile (by deleting the NANOS2 gene, which controls the fertility of animals), but then have their testes injected with the stem cells containing the DNA of another animal. The "surrogate dads" then produce sperm, but only with the DNA injected in their testes, not their own. This is expected to be used to advance the world of selective breeding and to easier transfer more desirable traits to livestock. In addition to this, these "surrogate dads" can help animals that are rare or facing extinction to have their DNA immortalized through sperm.

1 comment:

  1. This article is actually so amazing. This is such an innovative way to keep species from going extinct. I'm hoping scientists will take this a step ahead and potentially do this with surrogate moms especially if a species, for example, only had two animals remaining and both of them happened to be male. This way another animal that was a surrogate mom could potentially carry the dying species next generation of animals provided stem cells were extracted before hand for it to work.

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