Scientists Create Chickens Resistant to Bird Flu with Gene Editing: Progress and Challenges

Scientists have created chickens resistant to bird flu in the laboratory, proof that these birds can develop resistance to viruses. But they still have a lot of work to do to prevent the virus from mutating.

Researchers from University of Edinburgh and Imperial College London edited a gene with a biological role in the health of chicken cells and observed that nine out of ten birds with the altered gene exposed to a regular dose of the virus became immune to the infection. Only one hen had a minor amount of the virus for a day or two, they report Sky News.

The protective effect of the edited gene is not total: when the viral dose was increased 1,000 times, a level far above the natural level, almost half of the chickens were infected, show the authors of the study published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

The scientists also noticed that when the cell in the chickens was infected with bird flu, the virus took control of the edited gene to multiply, meaning they still have work to do before they can achieve full protection against bird flu .

Further analysis showed that the modified virus had “some ability” to use a version of a gene in the human cell, but failed to cause an infection. The bird flu virus has to undergo several major changes in different genes in order for it to infect mammalian cells. But the researchers want to eliminate any chance that the gene-editing technique will lead to the modification of the virus and the possibility that it will take a step towards causing human infections.

The bright side is that the genetically edited chickens remained healthy and continued to lay eggs throughout the two years of the study.

More than eight million chickens have died or been culled in the UK alone from bird flu since 2021.

Gene editing is more precise than controversial genetic modification techniques and has the advantage of not introducing genes from other species into an organism.

In addition to the need for further research, there are still legislative hurdles to overcome before the gene editing technique becomes available to farm chickens.

The British Parliament has passed a bill on “precision breeding”, which allows the genetic editing of plants and animals, but further regulations are needed before they can be eaten as food.

T.D.

2023-10-11 21:00:00
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