Humans have been shaping plants and animals for thousands of years, selecting for traits like hardiness, coat color, and disease resistance. Even before Mendel articulated the concept of the gene, we used selective breeding programs to foster the appearance of desired phenotypes. 

The recent development of custom-targeted nucleases like TALEN (transcription activator-like effector nucleases) and Cas9/CRISPR promises to radically alter what used to be accomplished by selective breeding, accelerating the process and expanding the types of genetic differences we can introduce.

A recent report demonstrates the potential of both approaches for supplementing or even replacing traditional breeding programs to introduce highly precise genetic changes—such as indels and SNPs—into cattle, pigs, and goats. Genetically dehorning cattle and introducing other naturally occurring performance-enhancing and disease-resistance alleles.

"This work demonstrates that precise, high-efficiency gene editing can be achieved in commercially important loci in livestock for agricultural or biomedical purposes." —Tan, et al

Efficient nonmeiotic allele introgression in livestock using custom endonucleases.
Tan W, Carlson DF, Lancto CA, Garbe JR, Webster DA, Hackett PB, Fahrenkrug SC.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2013 Oct 8. 110(41):16526-31.PMCID: PMC3799378.

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