To clone cows that produce lactose-free milk. It is this project that a group of Russian scientists is working on
Skoltech Institute of Moscow. The researchers, who in April 2020 cloned a cow, now aim to modify the animal's genes, and remove proteins that cause lactose intolerance, to produce hypoallergenic milk.
"When it was born, in April 2020, the animal made in the laboratory weighed about 64 kg and from May it started to graze with the other cows of the Institute", admitted Galina Singina, researcher of
Ernst Federal Science Center for Animal Husbandry and lead author of a study published in the journal Doklady Biochemistry and Biophysics. 14 months from birth, the cow weighs almost half a ton, is healthy and with a normal reproductive cycle.
Singina worked with colleagues from the Institute and the Moscow State University to eliminate the genes responsible for beta-lactoglobulin, the protein responsible for the 'bad' absorption of lactose. The researchers used Crispr/Cas9 technology to knock out two separate genes, called Paep and Loc100848610, expressing beta-lactoglobulin in the bovine genome.
"Cloning a single cow is really just a test," explained Petr Sergiev, professor at the Skoltech Institute and co-author of the study. The next step is to modify other cows,' said the scientist.
(da.xha/BalkanWeb)
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