Palabras

The GM Era |
Transgenic animal medical use |
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Areli Chagoya |
4/3/2012 |

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Areli Chagoya
April 3, 2012
The effect of TRANSGENIC animals on medicine
Introduction
Animals, especially mice, have been used for years for medical purposes for human medicine and sometimes animal medicine. Mice are most often used because scientists are able to test on a large number of mice andthey share a lot of genes our human species has. Money is a huge factor in research because you can only do so much with the amount the research project has been awarded, and mice are pretty cheap to up keep and test on. Among other medical reasons, also livestock has been genetically modified for consumption to achieve a better breed each time. The milk in dairy cattle has been recently modifiedto mimic the same properties in a human’s maternal milk; the milk from these dairy cattle is aimed for the use of replacement milk for newborns when the mother is unable to feed her baby in the crucial stages of growth. Transgenic animals are able to be disease resistant that is able to pose a smaller threat to human health. These animals are being produced to help the agriculture industry, butmost importantly for animal medicine.
Modifications
How are these animals modified? The animals that are used for medical health reasons are known as transgenic animals because they are made to transfer certain genes into drugs/implants into the human species. Their genetic make up is purposefully altered to reach a certain product needed. Most of the animal’s DNA is manipulated when theyare only embryos to successfully introduce genes. These transgenic animals are produce by: DNA microinjection, retrovirus, and embryonic stem cell-mediated gene transfer. DNA microinjections assure that the animal will carry certain genes that are desired. Retrovirus simply carries the genetic material in RNA instead of DNA. Embryonic stem cell-mediated gene transfer works by introducing thegene into the embryo.
Why use GM animals?
There are many proteins that diseases/illnesses that a person to begins to lose or possibly need to help them overcome the illness. A human’s body when sick, their immune system is compromised and prone to worsen because the defenses are down. Without the proper use of antibiotics or proteins the person may suffer even further; and that’s why we need tohave some transgenic animals to produce the proteins or anything that a person may need. For example the use of GM goat milk was used for human therapeutic protein and was the first. The milk was used for the treatment of people with antithrombin deficiency, which is a gene deficiency that leads to arterial thrombosis. (Eenennaam, 2008.) There have also been cattle milk used not only for humannewborn purposes, but also to treat people with emphysema. Though we are moving to use more livestock animals as transgenic animals, mice are still being used because they are cheap and easy to handle in large quantities. Mice are able to be altered with germline modifications to target disruptions in DNA and to produce human antibodies; The human antibodies from the transgenic mice would to beused to target human sequences from drugs that as a side effect target them (Lonberg, 2005.) This would be the first break through in transgenic mice, which would later lead into using transgenic livestock for human use and as we know now, we have moved into using them.
The use of the animals for pharmaceutical and nutritional needs is mostly known using cow and goat milk. The firsttransgenic animal used for this purpose was Rosie, that was genetically altered to produce human protein enriched milk. The milk from her was more nutritionally enriched than the regular milk bought in store and could be given to babies and elderly that are malnourished. Recently, China has been furthering the use of GM cows for breast milk that would contain the human protein lysozyme. The protein is...