Glowing in the dark
GMOs against bird flu
Olga Lazareva, "Abroad"
Over the past decades, avian influenza has managed to earn a reputation as one of the most dangerous viruses in the world. Last year alone, more than 48 million chickens and turkeys were destroyed in the United States because of it. And again, cases of human infection were recorded.
According to the World Health Organization, more than 200 people have died from avian flu in the 21st century. The last death caused by the virus was recorded in 2014 in Canada. In addition, the opinion has been expressed more than once that an actively mutating virus in the near future may cause a large-scale epidemic.
Despite numerous studies, until now, specialists have not been able to get closer to solving the problem and stop the spread of the virus. Now there is reason to believe that bird flu can still be stopped.
Scientists at Cambridge and Edinburgh Universities claim that it is possible to prevent the spread of avian flu with the help of genetically modified chickens. In the course of experiments, not yet hatched chickens were injected with a special set of RNA molecules (called the "trap gene" by default), capable of interacting with one of the virus enzymes and blocking it, as well as a fluorescent protein that makes chickens glow. The scientists then placed the glowing chickens in the same cage along with healthy chickens and chickens infected with the virus. It turned out that the introduced trap gene in most cases blocked the spread of the virus and genetically modified birds either did not get sick at all, or were infected later than ordinary chickens.
"Today we have positive results that help us move on and allow us to hope that humanity will finally be able to defeat the virus," says Helen Sang, a geneticist at the Roslin Institute of the University of Edinburgh, who participated in the study.
"This is a fundamentally new approach, much more effective than vaccines, which are not affordable for small farms in developing countries, where the virus is especially widespread," Lawrence Tiley, a molecular virologist from the University of Cambridge, comments on the study.
However, an independent expert, virologist Karel Shat from Cornell University (USA), is not particularly optimistic about the achievements of the British. "It is clear that the scientific community is excited by the success of colleagues, but do not forget that people making decisions in the food industry are very careful. Even despite the positive results of the study, the introduction of genetically modified animals into food production is still far away," Mr. Shat believes.
Persistent consumer prejudice against GMOs can indeed become a serious obstacle in the fight against avian flu. Suffice it to say that of the two largest poultry companies in the world, along with the British government, which funded certain stages of research, the first, the German EW Group, opposes the use of GMOs in food production, and the second, the American Cobb-Vantress, owned by the giant Tyson Foods, suspended investments in such scientific research due to their "commercial futility".
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru
11.09.2015