Animal Biotechnology Roles in Livestock Production

Abstract

Currently, meat and milk productions are significantly increasing especially in Asia. The supply of these products is vital to people’s health and well-being, whereas the efficiency of beef production appears to be still lower than other meat productions. Improvements in the quality and functionality of their livestock products, as well as their production efficiency, are required for further production. Animal biotechnologies have contributed to genetic improvement, genetic diversity maintenance of domestic animals, etc. Basic animal biotechnologies, such as artificial insemination and embryo transfer, have been well established and applied as powerful tools for genetic improvement of livestock. In the applications of artificial insemination techniques, the use of sexed semen has been now widely spread, and also efforts are also made in the development of the technology using a small amount of sperm. For embryo transfer, several types of vitrification technologies have been applied to improve pregnancy rates and contributed to the international/domestic supply of livestock embryos. Conventional animal biotechnologies, such as in vitro fertilization and intracellular sperm injection, have been applied to not only livestock production and also human-assisted reproductive medicine. For in-vitro production of embryos in domestic animals, currently, oocytes have been collected from medium or large follicles (3-6 mm or larger in diameter) of ovaries. Although the oocytes derived from small follicles (less than 3 mm in diameter) exist more on the surface of ovaries, the developmental competence of the oocytes has been known to be significantly lower than those from medium follicles. If we could improve the competence of oocytes derived from small follicles significantly, we may be able to increase the number of female gamete resources for in vitro embryo production. Also, the development of techniques for producing transgenic and cloned animals has greatly contributed to the creation of pharmaceuticals and organs for xenotransplantation. Recently, furthermore, genome editing technologies, such as combined use of CRISPR/Cas9 and PiggyBac, have been developed and have made it possible to correct specific parts of the genome and introduce mutations by homologous recombination. In this review, I would like to discuss the application and progress of the above biotechnologies, including our recent research results.

Applications of CRISPR-Cas9 as an Advanced Genome Editing System in Life Sciences

“…Nonetheless, because of its global economic value, multiparous nature, and comparatively short generation time, pig is the most genetically modified livestock to date. CRISPR-Cas9 plays a key role in improvement of livestock as the most prominent gene-editing technology today [103,104] (Figure 3). most genetically modified livestock to date.…”

“…most genetically modified livestock to date. CRISPR-Cas9 plays a key role in improvement of livestock as the most prominent gene-editing technology today [103,104] (Figure 3). This method creates desired changes by either enhancing frequency of favorable alleles or by clearing deleterious alleles [7].…”

Anthropogenic suffering of farmed animals: the other side of zoonoses

“…Genetic selection is used to generate greater muscle mass and body weight, and to do so at an ever-faster pace. These genetic manipulations can result in abnormalities and anatomical distortions, giving rise to often-painful pathologies: articular and skeletal problems such as bone deformities, pathological fractures and osteoarthritis (Gamborg & Sandøe 2003;Bizeray et al 2004;Shields et al 2013;Funahashi 2020). In the case of turkeys, for example (Erasmus 2018), the enormous muscle mass and rapid growth promoted by genetic selection cause serious skeletal problems that can result in pathological fractures; the birds suffer from bone deformities and are sometimes unable to support their excessive weight or even to move (Sullivan 1994, Zampiga et al 2020.…”