|
Sie sind hier: Landwirtschaft > Genfood > GMO Lebensmittel > GMO Regulierung > Genmanipulierte Tiere  Dieser Artikel ist leider nicht in deutscher Sprache verfügbar.
2.5 Genetically modified animals
Genetically modified animals (predominantly mice) have become
essential for many areas of biomedical research. In clinical research,
there is great interest in genetically engineered pigs as donors
of organs suitable for xenotransplantation. Another promising
domain of pharmaceutical research is the expression of therapeutically
valuable proteins in plants and in the mammary glands of mammals
('molecular farming').
Applying gene technology to produce animal feed stock for human
consumption is still considered to be very time-consuming and
expensive, despite the availability of techniques to introduce
genes into a variety of species (Sachse, 1996). Long generation
times, low transformation efficiency, laborious methodology as
well as the fact that knowledge about the genetics of relevant
species remaines scant greatly has limited the scientific advances
in this area. Furthermore, some early experiments using growth-promoting
genes had negative side effects on animal health (Sachse, 1996).
Transgenic fish, in particular salmon and trout species with additional
copies of growth-promoting genes (Devlin et al., 1995), may be
the first commercialised transgenic animals. As early as 1992,
transgenic salmons carrying additional growth hormone genes have
been shown to grow significantly faster than control salmons (Du
et al., 1992).
Gene technology has already found some application in food production
through bacterially-expressed BST (bovine somatotropin), which
is used in the United States and some countries in Eastern Europe
to increase the milk production of (non-transgenic) cows. However,
in the European Community and in Switzerland the use of BST is
prohibited.
|
Produkten.