RPT-Glowing in the dark, GMO chickens shed light on bird flu fight
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RPT-Glowing in the dark, GMO chickens shed light on bird flu fight
(Reuters) - In the realm of avian research, the chicks with the glow-in-the-dark beaks and feet might one day rock the poultry world.
British scientists say they have genetically modified chickens in a bid to block bird flu and that early experiments show promise for fighting off the disease that has devastated the U.S. poultry and egg industries.
Their research, which has been backed by the UK government and top chicken companies, could potentially prevent repeats of this year's wipeout: 48 million chickens and turkeys killed because of the disease since December in the United States alone.
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Bird flu has become a global concern among researchers over the past decade because of its threat to poultry and human health, and UK researchers have been toiling in genetic engineering for years to control its spread.
People who are in close contact with infected poultry are most at risk for flu infections, and scientists are concerned about the risk for a human pandemic if the virus infects someone and then mutates. No humans have been infected in the latest U.S. outbreak, but there have been cases in Asia in recent years.
"The public is obviously aware of these outbreaks when they're reported and wondering why there's not more done to control it," said Laurence Tiley, a senior lecturer in molecular virology at the University of Cambridge, who is involved in the experiments.
Scientists argue that GMO livestock could help control diseases and feed the world's growing population. But if salmon's arduous swim to approval is anything to go by, their breakthroughs will be slow to come to market.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been reviewing a type of GMO salmon for the past 20 years, even though the agency deemed it safe for humans in 2010. Developed by AquaBounty Technologies Inc, it was engineered to grow faster than normal.
Consumer activists have pushed back hard against GMO animals for food, arguing that GMO crops, already widely used and marketed, contribute to health and environmental problems.
FOOLING THE VIRUS
At Cambridge and the University of Edinburgh's Roslin Institute, scientists are using genetic engineering to try to control bird flu in two ways: by blocking initial infections in egg-laying chickens and preventing birds from transmitting the virus if they become infected.
Two of the world's biggest chicken breeders, Germany's EW Group and Arkansas-based Cobb-Vantress, have funded parts of the research, though they too harbor significant reservations about GMO breeding.
EW Group is interested in research to learn more about how chickens respond to flu, said Jim McKay, group director for science and technology. However, the company has a policy against breeding GMO animals and feels consumers are not ready to accept them in the food chain.
Cobb-Vantress, owned by top U.S. chicken company Tyson Foods Inc, has stopped supporting research into GMO chickens "at this time" because there is no approved commercial use, said Mitch Abrahamsen, vice president of research and development.
To genetically engineer chickens, the UK researchers inject a "decoy" gene into a cluster of cells on the yolk of a newly laid egg. The egg will hatch into a chick containing the decoy gene, which it will be able to pass on to its offspring.
The decoy gene is injected into the chicken chromosome alongside the fluorescent protein that makes the birds glow under ultraviolet light, similar to glow-in-the-dark posters in college dorm rooms. The birds would not be bred to glow if they are commercialized.
When the modified birds come into contact with the flu, their genetic code is designed to trick the virus into copying the decoy and to inhibit the virus' ability to reproduce itself.
In one study with a form of decoy, scientists put 16 infected conventional chickens in contact with a mixture of 16 normal and 16 GMO chickens that contained a decoy. The GMO birds were found to be less susceptible and succumbed to infection more slowly than the conventional birds, said Tiley.
FARMER PROTECTIONS
A more flu-resistant bird could be a notable advance from the basic steps that farmers now rely on to avoid infections in barns, including banning visitors and disinfecting vehicle wheels.
Wild ducks, which can carry the virus, are thought to have spread the disease in the United States by dropping contaminated feces and feathers on farms. Humans can then transport the disease on their boots and trucks.
The first GMO animal, a mouse, was produced in the 1980s for research purposes, according to the U.S. FDA. In 2009, the agency approved an anticoagulant derived from a GMO goat.
The FDA said "there are many reasons for producing" GMO animals and that it could not provide a timeline for a decision on the GMO salmon. The British researchers have not asked the agency to review the GMO chickens.
"We've got enough positive results to make us think it's worth taking it further," said Helen Sang, who took part in the flu experiments and is the Roslin Institute's personal chair in vertebrate molecular development.
"The benefit could be enormous." (Editing by Jo Winterbottom and Mary Milliken)
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RPT-Glowing in the dark, GMO chickens shed light on bird flu fight
If you have ever studied how genetics work in humans, you begin to see that whenever you change human genetics you could be creating an extinction sequence without realizing it. When you design anything to live ONLY right now here on earth you are lessening it's chance of long term survival. For example, when you selectively breed anything like dogs for example, you create weaknesses that you might not be aware of. Whereas a Wolf or wild dog not selectively bred will naturally create a wolf or dog that would survive ANYTHING in the wild likely except a world wide ice age, which likely is what ended previous human civilizations. We may have even have had intergalactic travel before but "Snowball Earth" would end that civilization (At least here on earth) and take people back to where the Native Americans in Alaska were in the 1800s or so when first contacted by white people from the U.S. and Canada.
Everything I wrote above goes for ANYTHING plant or animal you mess with genetically too much. It makes it vulnerable to any NEW or different conditions that may arrive here on earth. People messing with and changing things also is killing coral in the Pacific because of 90 degree Fahrenheit water which cannot support coral life anywhere. So, humans are changing many of the fundamental things in life that would keep them alive. The same with honeybees and neurotoxin insecticides that are taking away their ability to find their hives so the whole bee hive eventually dies from insecticides on flowers for literally anything that is being grown. IF it is doing this to bees what is it also doing to human beings who eat this spray on whatever is being grown? And what is it going to do to humans not to have any bees left alive that are domesticated to pollinate their crops?
Another factor in bird flu regarding chickens is when you put them in cages inside a barn or warehouse, turn the lights on them 24 hours a day so they bear more eggs, burn their bodies out before their time, don't let them ever walk on land but only cages, and fill them with antibiotics and chemicals, you have only created Frankenstein chickens that we are then supposed to eat. No wonder so many people get sick and die from their diets. No wonder so many chickens get bird flu.
If you were kept in a cage, never allowed to walk barefoot on land or grass anywhere and made to be in the light 24 hours a day, you would at the very least be nuts.
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