technologyreview | Scientists in China say they are the first to use gene editing to
produce customized dogs. They created a beagle with double the amount of
muscle mass by deleting a gene called myostatin.
The dogs have “more muscles and are expected to have stronger
running ability, which is good for hunting, police (military)
applications,” Liangxue Lai, a researcher with the Key Laboratory of
Regenerative Biology at the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and
Health, said in an e-mail.
Lai and 28 colleagues reported their results last week in the Journal of Molecular Cell Biology,
saying they intend to create dogs with other DNA mutations, including
ones that mimic human diseases such as Parkinson’s and muscular
dystrophy. “The goal of the research is to explore an approach to the
generation of new disease dog models for biomedical research,” says Lai.
“Dogs are very close to humans in terms of metabolic, physiological,
and anatomical characteristics.”
Lai said his group had no plans breed to breed the extra-muscular
beagles as pets. Other teams, however, could move quickly to
commercialize gene-altered dogs, potentially editing their DNA to change
their size, enhance their intelligence, or correct genetic illnesses. A
different Chinese Institute, BGI, said in September it had begun selling miniature pigs, created via gene editing, for $1,600 each as novelty pets.
The Chinese beagle project was led by Lai and Gao Xiang, a specialist
in genetic engineering of mice at Nanjing University. The dogs are
being kept at the Guangzhou General Pharmaceutical Research Institute,
which says on its website that it breeds more than 2,000 beagles a year for research. Beagles are commonly used in biomedical research in both China and the U.S. Fist tap Big Don.
