Researchers have deciphered the genetic code of cows, this can lead to the creation of higher quality milk and even shed new light on the health of humans and the cattle family
It took 6 years and 300 scientists from 25 different countries to decode the genetic sequence. The total cost of the research amounted to 35 million dollars, and its results were published in "Science" magazine.
The genome of the domesticated cow consists of 22,00 separate genes of which 20 percent are identical to human genes. The researchers also found that the structure of the chromosomes of humans is more similar to the structure of the chromosomes of mice than to the chromosomes of mice and rats - animals that are experimented on in various laboratories to examine the effect on human diseases.
The project to decipher the genome of cows was carried out on Hereford cows that originally came from Britain but today they live all over the world. These are medium-sized cows that are brown in color and are usually used for beef production. The beef industry is essential to the global agriculture industry when in the United States alone this industry is valued at 94 billion dollars.
Knowing the genetic structure will allow researchers to understand the underlying source of diseases, which will lead to healthier cows. The use of antibiotics will decrease and as a result the milk produced from these cows and the quality of their meat will improve. Genetic information will be used to build new strategies to fight diseases that affect cows and some of them, such as bovine encephalitis, also known as mad cow disease, are transmitted to humans. Understanding the genome of cows will even allow a better understanding of the human genome, comparing human genes with similar genes in other species will lead to new understandings about how they work.
Genetic tools are already used by the dairy industry today, the researchers predict that the use of genetic information will be widely used in the beef industry as well.
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Why do they say "sequence decoding"? After all, you don't decipher the sequence or the code to understand how it produces an organism. Just mapping the existing code. or discover it. Decoding is more of a creative solution to a problem.
When they understand why the cow's genome sequence makes it look the way it does and why it has all its characteristics then it will be deciphered.
brave hedgehog,
This means more experiments on cows will begin.
Wait, does that mean the experiments on cows were possible?
It seems to me that mad cow disease is not genetic at all, it is a psychological disease.
got it.
Following my response, apparently, the article was changed and corrected. Originally it was written that foot and mouth is actually mad cow disease.
Ami:
In my opinion, there is no connection between foot and mouth disease and mad cow disease (besides the fact that cows can get both) but the article does not claim such a connection.
On the other hand, I do think that mad cow disease is not a good example because, being a disease transmitted by prions, it is not at all clear that it has any connection to the structure of the genome (the genetic sequence is responsible for the composition of the protein but not for the way it is folded)
As far as I know there is no connection between mad cow disease and foot and mouth disease
Decoding a DNA sequence does not necessarily constitute a decoding of a gene sequence or amount of genes. This depends on many other factors and "jumping" genes, reading frames, etc. are not taken into account.
It seems that the work has only just begun and it will probably take many more years before they can derive real benefit from the disclosure of the genetic sequence.