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Scientists Clone Sheep With 'Good' Fat
redletterdave writes "Chinese scientists have cloned a genetically modified sheep containing a 'good' type of fat found naturally in nuts, seeds, fish and leafy greens that helps reduce the risk of heart attacks and cardiovascular disease. The gene, which is linked to the production of polyunsaturated fatty acids, was inserted into a donor cell taken from the ear of a Chinese Merino sheep. The cell was then inserted into an unfertilized egg and implanted into the womb of a surrogate sheep. With any luck, this process could be replicated in the future to clone more animals for safe and healthy consumption."
Healthy bacon. Mmmm.
...gets a bit of "good fat" occasionally
HeaIthy bacon, Mrnrnrn,
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
It's the same problem that killed Dolly the sheep early. Mammal female germ cells avoid activity prior to fertilization to minimize oxidation damage to their mitochondria. This may or may not be dealt with by then breeding normally thereafter.
Erk. Just read the process again. Gene into somatic cell nucleus, then somatic cell nucleus into regular egg. Doesn't have that problem.
GMO plants is one thing, but animals? I can't quite put my finger on why, but someting about this seems... troubling.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
The fact they got the fat gene from a round worm gave me this mental image of a 100lb round worm covered in sheep's wool. I doubt counting those wouldn't help me get to sleep and would likely give you nightmares.
So we'll soon have mutton that tastes like spinach?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
It's not like this is a rare nutritional commodity. I think I'll just stick to eating the nuts, seeds, fish and leafy greens instead of the cloned sheep.
Worth mentioning that humans evolved to eat animals with standard fat percentages, not margarine or mealworm-sheep. There is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD, and there are healthy populations that traditionally go 6-9 months with no fats except animals fats.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Eating animals just got even healthier.
If an animal has plant DNA, does that mean it is no longer an animal and even more delicious?
I want a Chai Latte straight from the cow!
I don't want to seem old or old fashioned but this seems like a really bad idea in numerous ways. Maybe they should feed the clone brains from another sheep to add another dubious aspect to this process.
When do we get Slig?
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
I wonder if it tastes anything like Mongolian Lamb ?, I'm sure the next step is Genetic marination - ready to cook !
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Can we genetically modify human women to not have any fat? I have one in particular that I'm pretty sure I have power over attorney over that I'd be willing to volunteer.
Not eating cloned anything or anything that's been screwed around with. I know it's unpopular here, but I eat everything organic...everything. As far as meat, if it didn't eat what it was supposed to eat; pasture raised and organic at that, I avoid it. Chickens eat bugs and grass, not feed. They like to scratch around in dirt, not hang out idly in cages all day. Same with Beef, less the bugs. We're likely evolved to eat a paleolithic era type diet. Going to stick as close to that as possible. You aren't just what you eat, you're also what your food ate. Why would I support something like 800 million pounds of pesticide being dumped on the land every year? Now it's some pesticide killing the bees. I remember when my Father's doctor had him eating trans-fat for his heart trouble. What will researchers discover ten years after this cloned junk's been foisted on the public?
Aren't they usually a liquid at body temperature? Going to make for some really squishy lambs...
You forgot the link, man. How are people supposed to buy your knockoff handbags?
What could possibly go wrong?
Why is it that most of the people that I encounter seem to have been shat from the Sphincter of Mediocrity?
The article says they successfully cloned the roundworm gene into a sheep but doesn't say how much it changes the fat in the sheep. Who knows if it's even significant? And who knows if it's OK for sheep's health to make a weird kind of fat and who know if people will like to eat wormutton?
A lot of the taste of meat is in the fat. Will it taste wormy?
This seems like a bad idea. Why not just eat nuts and fruit!?
Am I the only one who thinks animals evolved with "bad fat" for a reason, other than clogging your cardiovascular system?
Perhaps this "bad fat" isn't so bad? Remember when eggs were really bad for you, because they contained cholesterol, and now they're really good for you, because they contain good cholesterol?
I'm a little segfault, short and stout.
Yeah, everyone knows that. What a bunch of retards.
I think you may be wrong. Nuts and avocados are the most common plants to contain fats, but others do as well. Like olives.
Unless you think you're frying your chicken on olive carbs, rather than olive oil?
I'm a little segfault, short and stout.
I say you genetically modify the damn things to be walking grocery stands. Then in the other herd, you could genetically modify them to produce 'adult novelty items.'. Oh, I forgot, they already are.
There is absolutely no information in the article. "Healthy fat found in seeds"?
What it sounds like they're doing is they've figured out how to genetically modify animals to produce omega 3 and similar types of fats instead of the fats commonly found in grain fed or industrially raised meats. That's actually fairly big (good) news, I think.
On the other hand, 'healthy' fat can be found in animals which are 'free range'. It's less environmentally intensive. The unhealthy fat found in animal meat is only unhealthy because of the way they're raised.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Well obviously the fats came from animals. Olive trees are notorious for eating squirrels and other rodents.
Even for Slashdot, I'm somewhat amazed at this combination of immense ignorance and pretentiousness.
Really?
Irrespective of the chemical makeup of the animal, you are still exploiting another life form. Slavery of any sort should not be disguised as healthy eating.
GROOOOOOOOOSSS to the max! Your children will be born green with horns.
Worth mentioning that humans evolved to eat animals with standard fat percentages, not margarine or mealworm-sheep.
Worth mentioning that humans evolved with recurved spines that cause back pain. Evolved eating, breathing and speaking out of the same hole. Evolved all kinds of stupid, non-optimized features, of which our fat intake/heart disease relationship may be another. "The Panda's Thumb," by Stephen Gould, is a good read. In one of the many essays, he argues that the panda's screwy thumb isn't some highly optimized limb for stripping bamboo, it's just what evolution has managed to give the panda to date, with the poorly-suited wristbone it had to work with.
Ewe!
any particular reason one can't do this? A much more direct approach, healthier, more environmentally friendly, and doesn't have that extra-added danger of eating the product of extreme genetic modification...
Seriously, though. Please correct my understanding. Aren't the "good fats" typically oils (ie. fats with low melting points)? If these things are full of omega-3s rather than saturated lard, why is their body structure going to look like? Could sheep be harvested for their omega-3s rather than dredging for fish?
Interesting that they used a Merino - not a sheep grown for meat.
While it proves the process is possible, the genetics for merinos are all about wool - in particular fine wool.
The fat distribution in meat sheep is a bit different. Not sure about the composition.
Now we'll have lamb tasting like it, too.
Baa Ram ewe, Baa Ram ewe,
Sheep be true
Baa Ram ewe,
and doesn't have that extra-added danger of eating the product of extreme genetic modification...
Unlike, say, almonds, which were genetically modified to (mostly) not produce deadly cyanide anymore.
Goat, pig, and cow are all tasty. Sheep are nasty. The melting point of the fat is all wrong, causing it to adhere all over inside the mouth.
from cows that want to be eaten to genetically engineering animals to taste better and perform other tasks, I mean it cannot be far off before we engineer the livestock to eat bad stuff and convert it.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Agreed, I'm still hoping it's a joke.
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
This is really sad. I mean, you know the Internet is really going down the tubes if even spammers are too stupid to use it right.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Be honest: You think this could have happened here? Where we get our panties in a knot if someone only DARES to mention the idea of cloning or "playing God"?
I know a few people who actually went over to China to do some research without having to deal more with some religious nuts than with actual scientific problems. And, face it, if the Chinese can do it, they will do it. And that kind of food will be popular, think of it: Tasty meat without the associated health risks of eating too much of it. You want to bet that this will become a hit?
Patented by a Chinese company, of course. Be prepared to see more money siphoned away from us because yes, we want the results but no, we don't want the research to reach them.
Are we really that stupid?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
bacon cracklins chicharrones ... at 60yo, I really miss ....
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Thanks. Your startling ignorance spawned some really funny comments.
...after half the people I know have already died of heart disease!
Yeah, but it also has lead in it.
The latest scientific research shows that there is absolutely no issue with saturated fat. Heck, high cholesterol levels are pretty much meaningless in the latest research. Shit like this just keeps old, invalid, nutritional opinions running through our population. End this already.
...and increases the risk of obesity by remodelling the lipid bilayer.
http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1000623
Polyunsaturated fat is unhealthy (vegetable oil?). That's pretty stupid.
Except the cyanide is made inert by a sugar molecule.
/Eats "deadly" apple seeds, apricot kernels, bitter almonds
With tongue only partly in cheek, see:
http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2012/03/fruit-and-vegetables.html
I had a similar experience, except I was I only vegetarian for about 4 months. I gained an inch a month on my waist during that time. I took the weight off as fast as I put it on after I went back to eating lots of meat. Also I realized how much my energy level had decreased during that time. My blood pressure went back down and I just plain felt better.
Deuteronomy 13:06-9
On what evidence are you basing your assumption?
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for ethical treatment of foodstock, be it animal or plant, but let's not pretend that just because a being doesn't display distress in a manner we understand that it's not in distress.
Lets be honest. We don't like torturing animals, especially mammals, because they display distress in a manner we can relate to, thus triggering a feeling of empathy. The farther we get from mammals the less like us creatures become, and the less empathy we feel for them. Exhibit 1: many people don't like cooking live crabs because they scream when you dump them in the boiling water. Intellectually we may know the sound is hot gasses escaping from the shell, but the fact is they make a sound similar to what we'd imagine ourselves making in a similar situation, and our empathy is triggered.
Plants don't demonstrate distress in anything like the manner we do, heck you can't even see most of them moving except through time-lapse video, so it's easy to assume they don't experience distress. But that's only an assumption, there is no evidence to back it up. In fact I bet you didn't know that it's recently been discovered that plants appear to have brains (plural, to several orders of magnitude)? Truth! A small section of each root tip, less than a millimeter, just behind the "digging head" is filled with cells that demonstrate complex patterns of electrical discharges very similar to neural networks in simple animals. The "brain" is wired to an array of sophisticated chemoreceptors providing it with a sense of "smell"/"taste" to rival anything in the animal kingdom, and controls the behavior of the root - watch a time-lapse video of a root tip trying to get past a barrier and it behaves much like a worm. Granted each "brain" is quite simple, a few hundred cells or so, not much better than a worm, but each plant has tens, even hundreds of thousands or more of them, and they appear to coordinate with each other, though the mechanism is still unclear. It's possible some form of distributed intelligence might arise in such a situation - think about that the next time you're looking at a mountainside covered in aspen!
For those that don't know, aspens grow multiple "trees" from a single root system, an aspen grove will frequently actually contain only one or two aspen organisms, and a single organism can dominate a *very* large area, so that aspen-covered mountainside might contain a single massive distributed consciousness. Couple that with the fact that the root system is essentially immortal (at an estimated age of 100,000 - 250,000 years, the oldest documented organism is considerably older than the human species) and it's enough to send a shiver up the spine of anyone with an ounce of imagination.
We've got these wonderful places called Mongolian Grills / BBQs where you assemble your ingredients and they throw it on the grill for ya. All meat? No problem. All veggies? No problem. Little of both? Go all the way! Three bowls!
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
I can't deny anything you've said here, but "it's tradition!" isn't an argument in favor of something; it's an admission of defeat.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
If "cashman" has anything to do with cashews, you'd think he probably knows they have oils in them.