7. November 2008

Transgenic Chickens

Zur Methode der Vital Art


It took this brightest of all the races of the third species many thousands of years of research to discover the more delicate principles of heredity, and to devise a technique by which the actual hereditary factors in the germ could be manipulated.
Olaf Stapledon, 1930
in: Last and First Men

In seinem Klassiker Last and First Men beschreibt der englische Science Fiction Autor Olaf Stapledon ein zukünftiges Geschlecht von Menschen, deren Lebenszweck die gezielte Kreierung von Lebewesen ist.

Das folgende Zitat dient der Dokumentation einer Entwicklung hin zur schrankenlosen technologischen Gestaltung des Lebendigen.

State of Israel
Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development
Agricultural Research Organization

Introduction Of Genes Into Chicken By Means Of Techniques Developed For Gene Therapy

M. Friedman-Einat, G. Horev, A. Shamey, and S. Fierman
Department of Ruminant Nutrition and Metabolism

Direct transfer of genes into fully differentiated cells of an animal is a technology that has applications in a number of research areas including evaluation of genetic regulatory elements in vivo, vaccination and delivery of recombinant proteins.


Brathähnchen nach J. Kirchhoff (2008)

Transgenic Chicken
J. Kirchhoff, 2008


We demonstrated that injection of DNA plasmids with reporter genes into chick muscle lead to expression of the foreign genes for at least two weeks. To reduce the possibility of false positive signals, two different reporter constructs were prepared: the beta-galactosidase gene linked to the chicken beta-actin promoter, and the enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) gene linked to the human cytomegalovirus (CMV) promoter/enhancer. Both of these constructs were expressed at the injected sites. These results lay the foundation for further experimental protein expression in vivo, and provide the means of introducing gene products such as chicken leptin into chickens, thus circumventing the need to produce large quantities of purified proteins.

In preliminary experiments, we showed that introduction of the above constructs into the chicken testis by jet injection could result in expression of foreign genes in sperm cells. On the assumption that the chance of foreign DNA integration into the genome is enhanced during the mitosis and crossing-over which occur during sperm differentiation in the testis, this technique could lead to an efficient approach for the production of transgenic chickens.

Ausgewählte Links innerhalb dieser Webstruktur

2004: Three science fiction authors on artificial life forms
2003: Technik + Biologie = Anwendung
 2002: Panzerlaus und Cos

Letzte Änderung: 13. Mai 2009 // Vorheriger Eintrag
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