How CRISPR is Making Farmed Animals Bigger, Stronger, and Healthier
upstart writes:
These gene-edited fish, pigs, and other animals could soon be on the menu:
The CRISPR gene-editing tool has been making headlines for the last 10 years, since scientists showed it could be used to easily alter the genome of a living organism.
[...] So perhaps it's no surprise that scientists have started experimenting with CRISPR in farm animals. One popular target is a gene called myostatin, which codes for a protein that controls muscle growth. Interfering with this gene can lead to muscle overgrowth. In other words, you end up with big, muscly animals. And, eventually, more meat.
[...] Research in fish is also well underway. Using CRISPR to target the myostatin gene, scientists in Japan have generated red sea bream that are bigger and heavier, with 17% more muscle than their unmodified counterparts, despite being fed the same amount of food.
And similar approaches have been used to beef up carp, tilapia, catfish, and other aquatic animals, including oysters. Other researchers are experimenting with different ways of using CRISPR to boost disease resistance or create salmon that make more omega-3.
You won't find CRISPR animals as products on supermarket shelves just yet. But some are remarkably close. In 2021, Japan approved the sale of two CRISPR-edited fish. One of them is the beefed-up red sea bream. The other is a tiger puffer fish that's also designed to be heavier.
The researchers behind the transgenic catfish are hoping they'll get it approved for commercial production in the US. But that could take a while. Only one gene-edited fish has so far been approved for sale in the US-and it took decades to get to that point.
[...] It's difficult to predict how quickly CRISPR animals will progress through the US approval process. But they are on their way.
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