Chinese scientists believe they are the first people to create custom dogs using gene editing. Gene editing is a process in which scientists can disable genes or rearrange DNA. Scientists have created a Beagle that has twice the muscling that a normal Beagle would have. This mutation has been created by deleting the gene myostatin. Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health’s, Key Laboratory of Regenerative Biology researcher, Liangxue Lai said regarding the gene edited Beagle, “More muscles and are expected to have stronger running ability, which is good for hunting, police (military) applications.”
Not only are dogs being created for work purposes, the researchers will also be creating dogs with DNA mutations that will allow the dogs to mimic human disease including Parkinson’s and muscular dystrophy. Lai said, “The goal of the research is to explore an approach to the generation of new disease dog models for biomedical research. Dogs are very close to humans in terms of metabolic, physiological, and anatomical characteristics.” Dogs are not the first animals in China to undergo gene editing. Prior to dogs, this technique has been used on goats, rabbits, rats, monkeys, and human embryos.
Deletion of the myostatin gene is not a novel event. Rarely, humans are born without myostatin. Belgian Blue cattle lack myostatin The mutation also occurs in Whippets and creates dogs called “bully whippets”.
Eva Engvall, retired scientist and Whippet breeder said, “The point of this work was not to re-create myostatin knockouts. The point was to use the CRISPR technology in dogs. And in this project, the authors overcame some obstacles, in that dogs are a bit tricky when it comes to manipulating embryos.” Regarding myostatin deletion in Beagles, scientist Eliane Ostrander said, “The number of dogs is still small. It will be interesting to see what types of variation come up as more dogs undergo the process.”
Out of Lai’s experiment, so far two Beagles posses myostatin deletion. The deletion is complete in a female and incomplete in a male. Since the gene alteration was done when the dogs were still embryonic the editing can affect every cell in the dog’s body. The male (with partial deletion) produces sperm that contain the full myostatin mutation. Lai said, “The favorable traits that result from gene editing can pass generation by generation… which can be commercialized.”
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