Cow Clones With Human DNA

Valt writes "Over at Salon they have a interesting article on cow clones having human DNA. The cows are being genetically engineered to produce certain medicines in their blood and milk. Currently they produce 'immunoglobulins' ( disease-fighting human proteins), which are currently used to treat such maladies as tetanus and rabies. Nothing like a nice milk shake to cure a bad case of the rabies."

Comments

Script kiddies at Salon?

[mselmeci]

Other scientists have already spliced human genes into animals in the burgeoning field of molecular pharming.

Re:Script kiddies at Salon?

[GodlikeDoglike]

IIRCn pharming is an industry slang term for farming genetically altered product.

Re:Script kiddies at Salon?

[uncoveror]

Cows with human genes are insignificant compared to Meat that grows on trees, which is now being shipped to stores.

Re:Script kiddies at Salon?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you have ventured too far out of your area of expertise here -- this is biotech slang, referring to the production of pharmaceuticals in farm animals (cows, sheep, etc)

SLASHDOT POSTER CAUGHT HAVING GOAT SEX!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Frequent Slashdot poster and Baywatch actress Bonnie-Jill Lafin caught having GOAT SEX!!!!!

One of the only women to post on Slashdot, Bonnie-Jill Lafin, was recently spotted on the farm of Slashdot editor Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda having unprotected sexual intercourse with the 2-year old male goat, dubbed "Jon Katz". CmdrTaco was quoted as saying, "I don't see what all the fuss is about. I always do the deed with my farm animals. In fact, just the other day my buck-toothed wife wouldn't give me any, so I was forced to engage in interspecies fellatio. I was always wondering why the Slashdot trolls always post that filthy website http://goatse.cx. Curiosity got the best of me."

It's unclear if Ms. Lafin will be prosecuted, although police are investigating an unconfirmed tip that CmdrTaco has a secret stash of 400 gallons of goat semen stored in his basement, next to his Lunix boxen.

Re:SLASHDOT POSTER CAUGHT HAVING GOAT SEX!!!

[Spock the Baptist]

Are you saying that CmdrTaco is an old goat?

Re:SLASHDOT POSTER CAUGHT HAVING GOAT SEX!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

OMFG RTFA n00b!!!!!!!!!!!111111111111

Teh g0at si JonKAtz u fcuking laemr!!!!!!!11111111111 n00b

Re:DEATH TO MOTOROLA PPC

[Anonymous Coward]

DEATH TO MOTOROLA PPC

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With a Cherry on top, I get to use win2k for crap-software.

I just installed 6c115 OS 10.2 final on a G4 with 1GB of ram. SNORE. Youd think Apple would pick up on the fact they have a slow implementation of Unix on slow and inferior hardware.

Look to IBM Power4 or Intel for salvation, Motorola sucks. Intel has a larger payroll that Motorola makes on the PPC, and it show, loser.

You make me sick you MAC zealot maggot. I see through you. Your snarky little "hahahaha," your non chalant elitist proto communist attitude. You make me sick. You want to legislate mediocrity because you are a communist and dont belive the biggest, fastest or most qualified should win. Feiss isnt aout MAC, it is such a stupid fag-ridden ad campaign, I as a Unix and PC user (as well as SPARC and HPPA) have noticed this CRAP. As far as feiss being cute, I would let her suck me off and I would crap on her. As far as SPEC marks go, truth hurts, doesnt it zealot. You like making Jobs richer? Keep at it loser. The day my company fired an x-apple (& -NEXT) employee was the day things go better around the office. I hope you contract terminal cancer you snarky little faceless make zealot fuck.

Mad Cow anyone?

[Domini]

Perhaps care has to be taken not to promote Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Since this usually comes about when an animal eats it's own, and previously because they were feeding cow to cow. This time they may be feeding human to human, since the cows will contain human DNA?

Not that they plan to use the cows for human food, of course... but what if an accident happened, and somehoe they got nitroduced into general cow populations?

I know very little of this, but perhaps soneone in genetics can enlighten?

Re:Mad Cow anyone?

[Jackazz]

Do you drink milk? Have you gotten Mad Cow Disease?

Obviously the answer is no. Mad Cow and the related diseases in humans are thought to be caused by prions, simple proteins that are produced by your own cells machinery through alternative splicing of the RNA transcript. The prion is a promoter of the incorrect alternative splice and therefore, if you eat the brains of the infected person, you eat the prion and incorrect splicing begins in your brain too.

So milk (or blood for that matter) with human proteins could be entirely harmless. It is *possible* to make proteins that would be harmful, but there are so many FDA tests and requirements that a drug must pass that it is unlikely there would be negative accidental consequences. The proteins they are harvesting from the milk are immunoglobulins, commonly known as antibodies, and are basically completely harmless to you anyway. later

Re:Mad Cow anyone?

[Jackazz]

some tasty Mad Cow links:
http://www.mad-cow.org/~tom/prion_evol.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/madcow/prions.html

enjoy!

Re:Mad Cow anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are laws now banning the brains of cattle (or other feed animals) from being used. England started them in the late 80's after large epidemics of mad cow disease (BSE).
Domini, there is a book I have been reading called 'Genome - the autobiography of a species in 23 chapters' by Matt Ridley 14.00 USD at Barnes and Nobel. Great book for those of us new to genetics.
(Chapter 20, ironically, deals with prion based illnesses, CJ and BSE)

Re:Mad Cow anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a PhD geneticist, I can vouch that Jackazz is on target; the risk of Mad Cow from this is zero. Any products made from these cows will be produced in their milk (that's the point of using the cow, so it's easy to continue to harvest the product by milking the cow) AND highly purified just as any drug product would be before human use. I expect the products will be so carefully "cleaned" that even those with milk allergies will have no problem using them for treatment. Also, consider the scale of investment that these companies are making with these cows -- these may be the healthiest, best protected cows ever, to insure they grow up and make as much milk as possible. Finally, there is no evidence that any cows anywhere in the Americas have the "mad cow" prion, so it's vanishingly unlikely that these cows would ever get infected.

Happening in NZ too...

[kroniqnz]

There is currently a trial about this sort of thing happening over here in New Zealand.

From what I know they are doing stuff with human genes and cows already, and are wanting the go-ahead to start using genes of other animals.

There's a whole heap of crap about it here: http://http://www.nzherald.co.nz/ge

Ho-hum...I want it the other way around

[Anonymous Coward]

How about some humans with cow dna? I hate it when I need to run to the store to get milk.

And it would make women even more desireable.

Will this make it easier...

[dpilot]

for diseases to jump the species barrier?

Re:Will this make it easier...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is like asking, "will drinking beer give me a yeast infection?"

In a word, no.

no milkshakes

[tongue]

They won't be making any milkshakes out of this milk. They'll be processing it to take the proteins out and put them into a medicine; this is just a cheaper way to produce the proteins than whats currently there.

Re:no milkshakes

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a good thing too. Since about 3/4 of the human population can't drink milk due to lactose intolerance, milk makes a horrible distribution system. Unless, of course, the genetic freaks out there are trying to wipe out the rest of the planet.

Prescription drugs

[Izanagi]

Viagra in milk, but how would this affect the cows??

No doubt

[weirdoh]

Be endless ways to fuck the man with this.