>  Is there an easy to read primer on this topic?

Not exactly a primer but …

http://www.recombinetics.com/our-technology

Quoting from the website:

“The DNA sequence that is targeted by our editing enzymes may be a gene whose activity is not wanted. For example, some genes may limit health or productivity. The natural double-strand break repair pathways can be used to break genes and thereby inactivate them. We have implemented Meganucleases, TAL effector nucleases (TALENs), and our proprietry RecA fusion proteins in livestock cells and embryos for introducing double-strand breaks at specific sites in DNA.”

A recent WSJ article quoted the CEO of this company.  From memory, I recall he spoke of the ability to used polled beef cattle genes to create polled milk cows without the transference of undesirable genes from beef cattle to milk cows.  Given enough time and money one might well achieve that goal with standard breeding practices, but this new technology can achieve in months what would take decades to accomplish using previously existing methods.  I understand it cost about $50 to dehorn a milk cow, so the financial incentive to insert that particular gene into milk cows can be easily calculated.

This sort of technology is economically significant when the biological yield is high enough to justify the cost of all the lab work on targeted cells.  So, at present, developing cells will be altered and the resultant animal will move the altered gene forward in time.  That is not to say that, in the future, mature cells will not be altered to beneficial effect.

There are two, or perhaps, three lines of thought of near term commercial development.  

The first - animals as food produced with lower input costs.  (Perhaps wealthy countries will ignore this opportunity to feed their poor, but will the whole world do so in the name of "natural food"?)  

The second - animals for medical research which express human like conditions and could be used in medical and drug research programs. Perhaps there is the possibility of bespoke animals which mimic more accurately human symptoms.  But beyond that possibility this technology has the immediate potential of decreasing the cost of medical research by decreasing medical trial turnaround time and reducing the cost of related animal husbandry.  

The third – altered food animals can produce less problematic waste which would have beneficial effects on the environment.  This possibility has no obvious champion that I can identify; we can imagine who could profit for the first two uses of this technology but who will pay to reduce the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico?

I know of no current effort to use this technology to modify honey bees, but the technology is shelf ready as soon as someone identifies the beneficial genetic sequence, which produces a desirable phenotype, and also brings money to the table, er. lab.

IMO, the dramatic increase in our ability to decode genetic sequences (at ever lower cost) will lead to increased understanding to the workings of specific genes across the biosphere.  This technology will be used to make use of that knowledge.

Douglas Keeth
Central Missouri

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