2023-10-22 07:40:39
A British research team has created chickens resistant to avian influenza (AI) using gene editing technology. Even if these chickens are exposed to the avian flu virus, 9 out of 10 avoid the avian flu virus. Even if you are infected with the virus, there is almost no contagious power. The research team believes that if these chickens are introduced into chicken farms, avian influenza can be completely prevented within three years. Since the UK is a country where gene editing is allowed in animals, there is speculation that there is a high possibility of introducing chickens resistant to avian flu.
On the 11th (local time), a joint research team led by Helen Saint and Mike McGrew, professors in the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, and Wendy Barclay, professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Imperial College London (ICL), created chickens resistant to avian influenza using gene editing technology, according to an international academic journal. It was published in ‘Nature Communications’. It is the world’s first chicken resistant to avian influenza.
Bird flu is a fatal disease for chickens with a fatality rate of close to 100%. Avian flu occurs when birds, such as chickens, ducks, and migratory birds, are infected with the ‘H5N1’ virus. It spreads through the air, infects the respiratory tract, and rarely infects humans.
The chicken developed by the research team is attracting attention as a solution to prevent such large-scale infectious diseases. The research team focused on the fact that after the avian influenza virus infiltrates chickens, it proliferates depending on a specific chicken protein called ‘ANP32A’. They found a strategy to edit the ANP32A protein gene to prevent the virus from multiplying.
The research team edited the ANP32A protein gene in cells collected from chick blood. These cells were then used to hatch chicks. An experiment was conducted in which these chicks were fully grown into 10 chickens and then exposed to the avian influenza virus. As a result, 9 animals were found not to be infected. When the virus was artificially injected into chickens, about 5 chickens became infected, but the virus multiplied slowly. After observing the gene-edited chickens for more than two years, it was found that there were no problems with their health or egg production. In this study, the research team also discovered that proteins called ‘ANP32B’ and ‘ANP32E’ in chicken cells affect the proliferation of avian influenza viruses. The research team said, “If we gene-edit all of these proteins, chickens with complete resistance to avian influenza could be created.”
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