Amazing innovations in animal gene editing have the promise to streamline agriculture, with benefits for agricultural producers, consumers and the environment. Dr. Alison Van Eenennaam from the University of California Davis describes her laboratory’s recent work in cattle and sheep, with an update on what is happening in other animals.
While the vast majority of gene editing efforts have been confined to crop plants, animal gene editing holds tremendous promise. Efforts have demonstrated that naturally-occurring alleles could be reconstituted using site-specific nucleases, creating hornless dairy cattle and beef cattle with sex ratios skewed towards a higher proportion of males. These breakthroughs are just a sample of the powerful technology.
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