Chinese Scientists Make Cow Producing Human-Like Milk

hackingbear writes "Scientists from China Agricultural University have produced 17 healthy cloned cattle expressing recombinant human lysozyme using somatic cell nuclear transfer. Lysozyme, a bactericidal protein that protects human infants from microbial infections, is highly expressed in human milk but is found in only trace amounts in cow milk. The cloned cows produce milk with similar nutritional benefits as human milk, and the scientists hope their results will lead to new techniques that could be further refined for production of active human lysozyme on a large scale."

Comments

Yeah!

[MikeDirnt69]

Leave the breasts for the fathers!

human-like, not human

[spacefem]

This is all well and good, but it would take some seriously exhaustive studies to prove that this should be given to babies. Formula manufacturers have been trying to replicate human milk for YEARS without success. Milk is more than chemicals. It's hormones, it's enzymes, it changes based on what illnesses the mother is currently making antibodies for, it even changes from morning to night. I didn't think I'd ever become a breastfeeding militant, but it's happened... breastfeeding worked out so much better for my daughter & I than anyone ever lead me to believe, yet people still look for ways out of the "inconvenience" of, say, having to see women nurse in public (gasp!).

I love science, but if we're really smart we'd put less energy into trying to duplicate human milk, and look for more ways to support, assist, & enable nursing mothers.

Re:Breastfeed?

[Nidi62]

Or, you know, we could just breastfeed our kids.

Not every woman is able to breastfeed. Whether because they are taking medication for an illness, have had surgery or some medical condition that makes breastfeeding very unlikely if not downright impossible, or some other reason. These women are already being denied a major bonding experience between themselves and their baby(and this can be very traumatic for some women), why should their babies have to suffer by being given less healthy formula when it's possible for them to get something akin to human breast milk?

Multiple Sclerosis

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Formula manufacturers have been trying to replicate human milk for YEARS without success. Milk is more than chemicals. It's hormones, it's enzymes, it changes based on what illnesses the mother is currently making antibodies for, it even changes from morning to night. ...

Indeed.

Another issue with cow vs. human milk is risk of Multiple Sclerosis. Feeding cow milk to human infants drastically increases that risk.

MS is an autoimmune reaction against the myelin sheaths of nerves. Much of the avoidance of autoimmune reactions is done soon after birth, when the differentiated immune cells take a "grand tour" and those that recognize the body's own structures commit suicide. But myelin sheaths is one of a handfull of things not present until after this period. So it avoids attack later by having a "I'm special, don't attack me." sequence coded into the protein, next to its major antigenic region.

There's a protein in milk that has the same sequence. Unfortunately, the bovine version of the protein is slightly different in that region. So heavy exposure to cow's milk (perhaps in combination with other factors) occasionally leads to the immune system missing the signal, becoming sensitized to the myelin protein, and eventually attacking and destroying the nerve sheaths, creating one of the forms of MS.

To prevent this, some recombinant cattle have been created that express the human, rather than the bovine, version of the protein in question. Expected result, if this were to become the norm in dairy herds: No more risk of MS from drinking cow's milk than from drinking human milk.

At least for people. Calves might occasionally get MS as a result, unless the rest of the systems in question are also replaced with the human version.