World meat industry news

In Russia, for the first time, a cloned lamb was bred, the Moscow Academy of Veterinary Medicine and Biotechnology reported. K. I. Scriabin. This is a joint work with scientists from the Federal Research Center for Animal Husbandry. Academician L. K. Ernst, clarified at the academy.

“The uniqueness of the experiment lies in the fact that, for the first time in the world, hybrid cell lines were used for cloning, the genome of which is ¾ from domestic sheep and ¼ from a genetically distant wild species, argali,” the educational institution said in a statement.

At the first stage, scientists received and placed in the cryobank lines of embryonic cells - donors of nuclei for cloning. A total of three different hybrid lines were obtained.

At the second stage, the researchers determined the sex of the resulting cell lines, and a male line was selected for further work.

The next step was the implementation of cell engineering manipulations, obtaining cloned embryos and culturing them outside the body for several days in order to assess their ability for further development.

Developing embryos were transplanted into recipient sheep whose sexual cycle was previously synchronized with the stage of development of cloned embryos.

“Essentially, the development of an efficient cloning technology will make it possible to commercialize the creation of genome-edited farm animals. However, animal cloning is a technologically very complex and time-consuming process that requires the integration of highly qualified specialists with various complementary competencies into a single technological chain: cytologists, cell engineers, embryologists, reproductologists, veterinary surgeons,” noted the Skryabin MBA.