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Farm Animals of the Future
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16598 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1989 |
2,773 Words |
| Author
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Sandy Miller Hays
Sandy Miller Hays is a research reporter for the Agricultural
Research Service. |
Broilers blooming to market size 40 percent quicker, miniature hens cranking out eggs in double time, a computer "cookbook" of recipes for custom-designed creatures--this could well be the face of animal production in the twenty first century.
At least some of the keys to these sorts of scientific miracles are already in the hands of researchers, according to Robert J. Wall, a physiologist with USDA's Agricultural Research Service. Wall works at ARS' Reproduction Laboratory at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Beltville, Maryland.
"We'll analyze the entire genetic composition of the animal and store that information on computers," says Wall. "Then we'll be able to hook up a machine we already have, called a DNA synthesizer, and recreate the genes we want.
"Simply put, there are only five letters in the genetic alphabet, and only four occur in DNA--A, T, C, and G. These letters stand for the names of a kind of molecule called a nucleotide base. These bases occur in sequences--say ATCCGATCCG. The particular order of the letters and the length of the sequence, that's basically the recipe for a gene."
The chemicals represented by A, T, C, G, and U are no mystery, Wall says: "I have them in bottles in the refrigerator." But that doesn't mean scientists are ready to start building an animal from scratch.
"We can read the sequence of specific genes, although only in the last 10 years have we had the ability to do this with genes from higher organisms," Wall says. "We know the words, but we don't know the syntax of the sentences. There may be 100 genes involved in eye color. We have to learn not just what they are, but how they work together.
"We've figured out the sequencing on 1,000 genes, but there are probably 50,000 genes in humans or animals. And the ones we know about, we've reached through sort of a backdoor approach."
This approach is to identify a disease and determine that it's inherited and then to work backward until researchers find the gene responsible for a disease.
"Right now, without a disease, we don't have any information to work with. We can read a chromosome from start to finish and write down every A, T, C,
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