What is certain is that the pork project was technically impressive and scientifically intelligent. The genre has edited pork embryos to eliminate the receiver that the PRRS virus uses to enter the cells. No receiver means any infection.
According to Matt Culbertson, operating officer of the pig improvement company, a genre subsidiary, pigs seem entirely safe from more than 99% of the known versions of the PRRS virus, although there is a rare subtype that could perceive protection.
This project is scientifically similar to the work that has led to The sadly famous babies CRISPR Born in China in 2018. In this case, a scientist named Jiankui published twin girls to be resistant to HIV, also trying to remove a receiver gene when they were only embryos in a dish.
This experience on man has been widely criticized as erroneous. But pigs are another story. Ethical concerns about experimentation are less serious and the advantages of changing genomes can be measured in dollars and hundred. This will save a lot of money if the pigs are sheltered from the PRRS virus, which is propagated quite easily, causing losses of $ 300 million a year or more in the United States only.
Globally, people get animal proteins mainly of chickens, with pigs and cattle in the second and third place. A 2023 report estimated that pigs represent 34% of all the meat consumed. Of the billions of pigs worldwide, about half are in China; The United States appears in a distant second, with 80 million.
Recently, there have been many fairly stupid news on genetically modified animals. A company called colossal biosciences used genes to modify the wolves of the way it claimed them made them look like a extinct species, the terrible wolf. And then there is the project, an effort managed by biohackers who say they will do brilliant rabbits And have an extensible goal of creating a horse with a horn – it’s straight, a unicorn.