That's great! China has successfully bred the world's first pig against three major diseases.

The genetic engineering and species innovation team of the Beijing Institute of Livestock and Veterinary Research of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences has made important progress in the research and development of gene-editing disease-resistant pigs in cooperation with Hua zhong Agricultural University, Shandong Lanth Species Co., Ltd., and Guelff University in Canada.
first time, the research and development team has implemented double gene editing of pig CD163 and pAPN, which are resistant to three major diseases while maintaining normal production performance.
, the results were published online in eLife, an international journal of biology.
, according to Professor Li Kui, major infectious diseases are the biggest threat to the pig industry, and in 2019 alone, the economic losses caused by infectious diseases to the global pig industry amounted to hundreds of billions of dollars.
Pig breeding and respiratory syndrome is a highly pathogenic infectious disease characterized by reproductive disorders such as premature birth of pregnant sows, late miscarriage, stillbirth, weak and mummified fetuses, and respiratory diseases of piglets and growing pigs.
two types of coronavirus, pig infectious gastroenteritis virus and pig Delta coronavirus, can cause deadly diarrhea in piglets.
, there is still no safe and effective way to prevent or control these diseases.
precise editing of the genome removes pig-borne genes that are mediated by the virus, preventing the virus from entering the pig, thus effectively preventing these diseases and providing a new way to solve the problem of major infectious diseases.
In order to achieve the above objectives, the research and development team used the big white pig as the research object, using gene editing technology to edit the CD163 gene seventh exon and the second exon of the pAPN gene, so that the virus-like bodies CD163 and pAPN protein inercess, successfully bred CD163 and pAPN dual gene editing pig.
Live drug test results show that the double gene-edited pig can resist both pig reproduction and respiratory syndrome virus and infectious gastroenteritis virus infection, and can significantly inhibit the infection of pig Delta coronavirus, providing the first live experimental evidence of pAPN as one of the pig Delta coronavirus subjects.
the above three viruses can establish infection and cause disease in unedited wild controlled pigs.
the performance measurement and slaughtering experiments of multi-year breeding observation, breeding and national pig breeding center show that the double gene-edited pig breeding and production performance is normal.
the successful breeding of this double gene-edited pig provides important breeding materials for the cultivation of new breeds of disease-resistant pigs, and also demonstrates the great application value of the emerging genome editing technology in animal breeding.
the study was supported by major projects for the cultivation of new varieties of genetically modified organisms, scientific and technological innovation projects of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the National Natural Science Foundation of China and Shandong Lansi Species Co., Ltd.
Xu Kui, Zhou Yanrong and Mu Yulian are the co-first authors of the paper.
Yulian, Xiao Shaobo, Li Julang and Li Kui are co-authors.
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