Scientists have created cattle, goats and pigs that can serve as viable “surrogate sires,” male animals that produce sperm carrying only the genetic trains of donor animals. Published September 14 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, this feat may speed available of desirable livestock characteristics and improve food production worldwide.
The study is the result of six years of work led by Jon Oatley, a reproductive biologist at Washington State University, and others from Utah State University, University of Maryland and the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom.
Source: PHYS.ORG, September 14, 2020. Link. A research team . . . used the gene-editing tool, CRISPR-Cas9, to knock out a gene specific to male fertility in the animal embryos that would be raised to become surrogate sires. The male animals were then born sterile but began producing sperm after researchers transplant stem cells from donor animals into their testes. The sperm the surrogate sires produced held only the genetic material of the selected donor animals.
If we can tackle this genetically, then that means less water, less feed and fewer antibiotics we have to put into the animals.” Jon Oatley, Washington State University
INSIGHTS: Though this technology is sound enough to be commercialized, gene-edited sires cannot be used in the food chain anywhere in the world under current regulations. Societal acceptance and federal policy will drive the speed of it becoming the tool it can be.