Avoiding the white stuff may soon become a thing of the past now that a New Zealand team has created a cow that produces hypoallergenic milk.
About 1.5 per cent of infants are allergic to a milk protein called betalactoglobulin (BLG). So Stefan Wagner and his colleagues at AgResearch in Hamilton, New Zealand, identified the genetic code for the protein and then made a complimentary genetic structure that shut down BLG production when injected into a cell's nucleus.
They transferred a treated nucleus into a cow egg cell, which was fertilised and implanted into another cow. The cow gave birth to a healthy female calf, although curiously it was missing a tail.
The calf was given hormones to provoke early lactation and the milk analysed to reveal that it completely lacked BLG. Levels of other milk proteins were unusually high. "I'm not sure if this would make the milk any better or healthier, but it might be useful in cheese-making," says Wagner. He doesn't know if the milk is any tastier, either, since regulations mean they can't yet try it.
Similar approaches might enable researchers to tweak other properties of milk such as levels of antibodies and hormones, which could have medical uses. The team will wait until the calf is older to study the function of BLG, which might also solve the mystery of the missing tail.
Journal reference: PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1210057109
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