This Spring brought news of goats engineered to lactate the building blocks of a malaria vaccine. Now Co.Exist reports on transgenic goats that produce milk with breast milk enzymes and proteins. Which begs the question: What’s more odd, milking goats for drugs, or milking goats for human milk? And which work-around has a better chance of widespread adoption?
UC Davis scientists created the transgenic goats by transferring human genes for breast milk enzymes and proteins into goat embryos. Co.Exist’s Peter Smith reports:
The transgenic dairy goats can make milk with up to about 60% of the lysozyme and lactoferrin found in mother’s milk, which means a longer shelf life (these chemicals kill pathogenic bacteria) and also a faster cheese-ripening process (they kill off the milk’s beneficial bacteria sooner).
View the original article here: These goats produce human breast milk – SmartPlanet.com (blog)
