GM cows produce human milk

[mr friendly guy]

linky

Scientists develop dairy version of human milk
Richard Gray
April 4, 2011

SCIENTISTS in China have created genetically modified cows that produce ''human'' milk.

They successfully introduced human genes into 200 cows to produce milk with the same properties as human breast milk.

Human milk contains high quantities of nutrients that can help boost the immune system of babies.
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The scientists behind the research believe that milk from herds of genetically modified cows can provide an alternative to human breast milk and formula milk for babies, which is often criticised as being an inferior substitute. This seems like a nice step towards that goal, since we now introduce human genes into an animal which actually produces a useful product (if it does turn out to be superior to formula milk as they hope).

They said genetically modified dairy products from herds of similar cows could be sold in supermarkets and the research has the backing of a big biotechnology company.

British scientists said it had the potential to be of huge benefit, but the work is likely to inflame opposition to genetically modified foods.

Critics of the technology and animal welfare groups reacted angrily to the research, questioning the safety of milk from genetically modified animals and its effect on the cattle's health.

Professor Ning Li, the scientist who led the research and the director of the State Key Laboratory for AgroBiotechnology at the China Agricultural University, insisted that the genetically modified milk would be as safe to drink as milk from ordinary cows.

''The milk tastes stronger than normal milk,'' he said. ''Within 10 years, people will be able to pick up these products at the supermarket.''

The rules on research into genetically modified food are more relaxed in China than in Europe and its scientists are leading the way in the field.

The researchers used cloning technology to introduce human genes into the DNA of cows before the genetically modified embryos were implanted.

Writing in the journal Public Library of Science One, the researchers said they were able to create cows that produced milk containing a human protein called lysozyme, which is found in large quantities in human breast milk and helps to protect infants from bacterial infections.

The director of GeneWatch UK, Helen Wallace, said: ''We have major concerns about this research. There are welfare issues with genetically modified animals as you get high numbers of stillbirths.

''There is a question about whether milk from these cows is going to be safe for humans.''

A spokesman for the RSPCA said the organisation was ''extremely concerned''.

Telegraph, London

I have heard one of the holy grails of GM animals is to be create organs for transplant, which if you use the genes from the patient one might expect no rejection.

[madd0ct0r]

are you suggesting these cow's udders are up for breast enhancement surgery?

pull the udder one.


Extremely cool, although it does stray into my personal 'ick' territory. Not many things do, whihc might suggest they're going to need a REALLY good marketing campaign.

[someone_else]

The director of GeneWatch UK, Helen Wallace, said: ''We have major concerns about this research. There are welfare issues with genetically modified animals as you get high numbers of stillbirths.

What is this guy talking about? Animal stillbirths? Human stillbirths? Whose welfare is he talking about?

[Broomstick]

Animal stillbirths.

Genetic modification is not an exact science. When you tinker with genes the results aren't always what were anticipated.

As we haven't gotten to human genetic modification (that I know about) this is not (yet) an issue of human stillbirths.

[PeZook]

Animal welfare, obviously.

Also, the article is incorrect (slightly), what boosts the child's immune system are antibodies in the mother's milk: essentially the child's body stockpiles munitions to fight disease. Thing is, those depend on what the mother has produced. I'm pretty sure smallpox is not gonna be an issue for kids nursed on that milk

Anyway, that's actually pretty awesome. I never understood why humans go 'ick' at the prospect of drinking human milk while happily chugging on cow milk. I mean, human milk is optimized for human consumption, so, uh...

[Darth Tedious]

Won't the cows need to be exceptionally well-fed (and I'm talking quality, not quantity)?
I read a study a while back (racking my brains to remember where) that said most breatmilk was actually inferior in nutritional quality to formula, because the average mother these days has a relatively poor diet.

[PeZook]

That's...really unlikely. Especially as it's contradicted by so many other studies.

A link would be great.

[Shroom Man 777]

The Philippine Department of Health states that breast milk is superior not only in terms of nutrition, but also in being hypoallergenic and in providing immunogoblins or whatever for the babies to boost their immune system and make them resistant to allergies. Not only that, but it is also more easily digestible.

Your cheap powdered formula cannot hope to match the chemical compositions produced by the human body, the mother's breasts bleeding milk from the milkbags, god's most beautiful creation.

People also like formula milk because it is more difficult to digest for the babies, meaning that it takes longer for the babies to shit it out, so less diaper changes. Lazy parenting.

[PeZook]

Also the kid eats more rarely with formula.

As for lazy parenting, you try getting up every two hours at night for six weeks

[Darth Tedious]

The Philippine Department of Health states that breast milk is superior not only in terms of nutrition, but also in being hypoallergenic and in providing immunogoblins or whatever for the babies to boost their immune system and make them resistant to allergies. Not only that, but it is also more easily digestible.

Your cheap powdered formula cannot hope to match the chemical compositions produced by the human body, the mother's breasts bleeding milk from the milkbags, god's most beautiful creation.

Perhaps cheap is the problem word there. I do remember the study was done comparing samples of breastmilk against top shelf formula. It did note that the cheap stuff is not in the same league. I'll try to find it- it was a few years ago, I noticed it at the time because my daughter was just switching over to formula. I'm pretty sure it was an Australian study. I wouldn't be surprised if the average Phillipino diet is somewhat better than the average Aussie one.

All this said, I agree that breast milk is better. I'll try to find that damned study anyway.

People also like formula milk because it is more difficult to digest for the babies, meaning that it takes longer for the babies to shit it out, so less diaper changes. Lazy parenting.

I found only the quality was affected, but not the quantity. Instead of mustard coloured shit, it was a greenish hue, and the amount didn't really vary (I was the one dealing with it). If anything, there was more crap after putting her on formula, because her mother didn't provide enough milk.

EDIT: Looking for that damn link...
2nd EDIT: There's too many of them! Just do a search. The main worldwide proponent of the idea seems to be Sven Carlson, a Norwegian Pediatrician. And it's not just shitty diet, cigarette smoking is another major factor in the argument.

[PeZook]

My wife also didn't provide enough milk so the amount of crap increased after we switched over, but that's not a rule. Statistically speaking, babies metabolise formula slower than breastmilk.

[Shroom Man 777]

Filipino diet better than the Australian diet? What do you Australians eat, eucalyptus leaves?

There is also the advantage of maternal-child bonding between a mother feeding a child with her breasts, than a child feeding on an inanimate bottle.

But that has nothing to do with mutated cows though.

[Darth Tedious]

Filipino diet better than the Australian diet? What do you Australians eat, eucalyptus leaves?

There is also the advantage of maternal-child bonding between a mother feeding a child with her breasts, than a child feeding on an inanimate bottle.

But that has nothing to do with mutated cows though.

Nah, we have a sad tendency to pig out on junk food. MacDonalds is probably not as good for you as gum leaves.

I totally agree about the bonding aspect of breastfeeding, though, as a father, I found bottle feeding handy, as I got to bond with my daughter that way, even though the milk was in a bottle.

To relate back to mutated cows- they most likely won't smoke. And, provided they have a good vitamin intake from their feed (which was what I was thinking about when I made my first post), the GM cow's milk might turn out to be better than human milk (unless it's from a non-smoking health nut, and not enough mothers these days seem to be).

My wife also didn't provide enough milk so the amount of crap increased after we switched over, but that's not a rule. Statistically speaking, babies metabolise formula slower than breastmilk.

Wouldn't it be a rule in cases of insufficient milk then, regardless of the metabolic rate (given that we're measuring poo output, not the rate of digestion)?

[Serafina]

My wife also didn't provide enough milk so the amount of crap increased after we switched over, but that's not a rule. Statistically speaking, babies metabolise formula slower than breastmilk.

The obvious solution is a lesbian couple where both can nurse the child


Darth Tedious does have a point here. If the diet of the mother is really bad, especially if it lacks vitamins, iron or somesuch, then that will affect the babies nutrition as well. In such a case, formula is likely better.
But if the mothers diet is already that bad, then the child would also be negatively affected during pregnancy. A healthy diet is really a requirement for a pregnant woman, continuing it for some time should not be that much of an issue.

However, you do NOT have to be a "health nut" in order to have such a healthy diet. All you really need to do is make sure that you do not have vitamin deficiencies or somesuch, which isn't much of a problem in first-world countries unless you solely gobble junkfood.

If we take those two points into consideration, the major benefit here is really for women who do not produce sufficient (whether quantitative or qualitative) milk. You have to eat healthy anyway, and substituting with this artificial human milk is preferable to using formula milk.

[Simon_Jester]

Animal welfare, obviously.

Also, the article is incorrect (slightly), what boosts the child's immune system are antibodies in the mother's milk: essentially the child's body stockpiles munitions to fight disease. Thing is, those depend on what the mother has produced. I'm pretty sure smallpox is not gonna be an issue for kids nursed on that milk

Will antibodies acquired from a cow actually benefit a human?

[Serafina]

Animal welfare, obviously.

Also, the article is incorrect (slightly), what boosts the child's immune system are antibodies in the mother's milk: essentially the child's body stockpiles munitions to fight disease. Thing is, those depend on what the mother has produced. I'm pretty sure smallpox is not gonna be an issue for kids nursed on that milk

Will antibodies acquired from a cow actually benefit a human?

If i recall correctly, if it's the same disease, antibodies are generally very similar if not identical. I think that principle is used in vaccine research and production.

[Broomstick]

Yes, it certainly can - products derived from animal blood, such as anti-venom, do have a role in human medicine. In general, though, the closer you can get to human the better.

[Steel]

Animal stillbirths.

Genetic modification is not an exact science. When you tinker with genes the results aren't always what were anticipated.

As we haven't gotten to human genetic modification (that I know about) this is not (yet) an issue of human stillbirths.

Thats an understatement.

GM is far from an exact science. Essentially the process of genetically modifying something goes like this:

Identify genes in your organisms DNA that might have something to do with the thing you want to change.

Next, take one of those genes and chop it out of the DNA. You now have a gene, what this actually looks like is a sequence of several hundred to tens of thousands of base pairs, essentially the letters {A,T,C,G} repeated in a totally random fashion thousands of times. Having read the last sentence you now have as much understanding of how those arbitrary strings of letters actually control what your organism does as any scientist on the planet.

Now comes the genetic modification! In order to perform that you now take your existing (working) gene, and make tens of thousands of deliberately bad copies of it using a technique like error prone PCR or something. What this does is it makes an exact copy of your gene, but will replace maybe a dozen (of the 10,000 odd) base pairs with a different base pair.

Now you stick one of these modified genes back into the segment of the organisms DNA where you took the original gene out, and grow a new organism with that.


This is essentially the same as taking a computer program where you know it works, then placing the cursor in a point in the program where you think it does something you're interested in and then bashing your forehead on the keyboard, then seeing if the program works better. I'm amazed it works at all. Thats the great thing about biology I suppose, something always has to happen, however it isn't always going to be better. Hence the stillbirths.

Now this might look like a completely arbitrary process of trial and error, that requires thousands of replicates to even get the vaguest idea of it what you're doing even has an effect. Well it does! Luckily there are thousands of grad students (not a finite resource) out there to prod away at genes for 10 hours a day for years on end.

[someone_else]

Animal welfare, obviously.

I'm pretty sure most cattle breeders don't give a shit. All cows I saw here tend to live in uhm... crappy conditions. Conditions designed to maximize their meat and milk production, but not that fun for the animal.

As we haven't gotten to human genetic modification (that I know about) this is not (yet) an issue of human stillbirths.

That could have been interpreted as "pregnant women that dring this milk may have stillbirths" too. Although yes, would make little sense.

Will antibodies acquired from a cow actually benefit a human?

They can do some harm too.

make tens of thousands of deliberately bad copies of it using a technique like error prone PCR or something

If you're so worried by accuracy, you can also use yeast or bacteriums to make copies of your genetic material. It just takes more time (days for bacteria, something more for yeast), and then you have to extract the plasmides.

[Korto]

Also the kid eats more rarely with formula.

As for lazy parenting, you try getting up every two hours at night for six weeks

Mate, breastfeeding is easy compared to bottle. You just sleep the whole night through, and let the woman do all the work.
More seriously, there are advantages in ease with the breast. No worrying about sterile bottles, no having to (precisely) mix formula in the middle of the night, no worries about temperature, or just flat running out of the stuff. Problems too, true, but combining co-sleeping with breastfeeding makes it easier because at least you don't have to wake all the way up and get out of a nice warm bed on a freezing winter night (although does little to cure sore nipples or mastitis).

On topic, however, if the milk is identical to human milk, I would imagine it would have all the nutritional qualities of the same (dependant on how good the diet is, and treatment afterwards; milk from China, anyone?), but I would expect it to miss out on geographically dependant and species dependant antibodies. So, better than formula, but not as good as mothers-own.

[Steel]

make tens of thousands of deliberately bad copies of it using a technique like error prone PCR or something

If you're so worried by accuracy, you can also use yeast or bacteriums to make copies of your genetic material. It just takes more time (days for bacteria, something more for yeast), and then you have to extract the plasmides.

The accuracy isn't a problem, it is in fact the point of the technique. The 'errors' are deliberately inserted, it is actually how they are doing the genetic modification. Nobody actually has any clue how changing individual base pairs in DNA affects the organism as a whole, so you just change some randomly and hope.

There are many forms of PCR (read: a magic spell that makes arbitrarily many copies of a bit of DNA) that operate without any errors. However in this case they deliberately use 'Error Prone PCR' in order to chance the sequence slightly -and essentially randomly too. Then see what the effects of that were by growing a new generation from the modified genes and keep on doing that on whatever looks like its working better than before.

[PainRack]

The director of GeneWatch UK, Helen Wallace, said: ''We have major concerns about this research. There are welfare issues with genetically modified animals as you get high numbers of stillbirths.

What is this guy talking about? Animal stillbirths? Human stillbirths? Whose welfare is he talking about?

He's probably referring to the higher amount of stillbirths and other birth defects resulting from cloning experiments.

Mate, breastfeeding is easy compared to bottle. You just sleep the whole night through, and let the woman do all the work.
More seriously, there are advantages in ease with the breast. No worrying about sterile bottles, no having to (precisely) mix formula in the middle of the night, no worries about temperature, or just flat running out of the stuff. Problems too, true, but combining co-sleeping with breastfeeding makes it easier because at least you don't have to wake all the way up and get out of a nice warm bed on a freezing winter night (although does little to cure sore nipples or mastitis).

On topic, however, if the milk is identical to human milk, I would imagine it would have all the nutritional qualities of the same (dependant on how good the diet is, and treatment afterwards; milk from China, anyone?), but I would expect it to miss out on geographically dependant and species dependant antibodies. So, better than formula, but not as good as mothers-own.

Cleaning the breast, latching and baby biting doesn't really translate to easy. Well, for the ladies that is:D

[someone_else]

Nobody actually has any clue how changing individual base pairs in DNA affects the organism as a whole, so you just change some randomly and hope.

Ok, but none creates new genes from scratch if they can be stol... uhm I mean copied from somewhere like in this case.
In this case you take a bunch of genomes with the gene you want (human genomes), cut it in pieces with specific restriction enzymes (that cut DNA in specific areas), and you usually do a PCR now to select and "amplificate" (make copies of) the genes you need (with the most advanced polymerase enzymes you have a laughably low error rate since they check their own product to the contrary of the famous Taq-polymerase that isn't that crappy either).
You use specific oligonucleotides, to select and amplificate only the genes you want. Before PCR got perfected it was a pain in the ass requiring electrophoresis to separate stuff from buckets of genomes.

Afterward you transfer the PCR-amplificated genes directly in plasmids (commercially-available rings of DNA containing various restriction sites that allow you to cut them open with various restriction enzymes to insert different strains of DNA, plus some promoter regions stolen from virus that orders the cell to EXPRESS IT IMMEDIATELY, plus some areas that grant resistance to an antibiotic). Then you insert these plasmids into bacteria (cheaper) or in yeasts (more expensive, but they do high-quality work being eukaryotes), with some kind of transformation/transfection (respectively bacteria/yeasts), select only the ones where the gene actually got in and is expressed (=used to make proteins) by inserting an antibiotic that kills all critters that don't express the resistance genes on the plasmid (that are assumed to not have said plasmid in them).

Now you let them grow. Bacteria need a day or so and you get a fuckton (they also smell bad but that's a detail), yeast needs somewhat more. Then you kill most of them and extract the plasmids (you leave alive some since you don't want to start from the beginning if the next step fails).

At this point you have enough plasmids to do the real trick, the actual gene insertion in the cells you want to make transgenic.
So, you take the plasmids and transfect them into a the cells you want, kill all cells that didn't get the plasmid and wait a miracle happens.
The miracle is a gene conversion, that is basically an error of the DNA-fixing mechanisms. When damage to its genome occurs (sometime happens) and the gene you want inserted looks relatively alike the damaged strands, those mechanisms do the trick of integrating your gene in the genome.
This has ludicrously low efficiency, and assuming you don't fuck up other useful genes (likely the cause of stillbirths), you get an heterozygous individual with the gene you added.
From then on it's vastly easier to use the usual breeding techniques to make homozygous individuals.

[PeZook]

Mate, breastfeeding is easy compared to bottle. You just sleep the whole night through, and let the woman do all the work.
More seriously, there are advantages in ease with the breast. No worrying about sterile bottles, no having to (precisely) mix formula in the middle of the night, no worries about temperature, or just flat running out of the stuff. Problems too, true, but combining co-sleeping with breastfeeding makes it easier because at least you don't have to wake all the way up and get out of a nice warm bed on a freezing winter night (although does little to cure sore nipples or mastitis).

Yeah, but you start running into problems when the mother doesn't produce enough milk. And if the little one isn't too enthusiastic about suckling either, this compounds.

That leads to the baby not being full, so he wakes up more often, so we end up using a lactator to prepare enough breastmilk for feeding beforehand which means waking up a while before feeding time and staying up longer etc.

We endured two months before giving up due to sheer fatigue.

[Lusankya]

Aside from the use as an alternative to breast milk, I imagine that assuming the milk proteins in this are more like human milk than cow milk, this will prove to be reasonably popular in a country where a large portion of the population is dairy intolerant.