PIGS AND PHOSPHOROUS REQUIREMENT:A genetic solution to a nutritional problem - Essay Example

Over years, it has been proved that most of the mono-gastric animals such as pigs and portray produce their manure with large quantities of phosphorous. This is because these animals lack proper enzymes for breaking down the organic phosphorous. This is the reason scientists have decided to work on reduction of release of phosphorus to the environment (RosENGARD45-90). They have advised farmers on the best feeds to feed their animals, and they have gone further in developing a more improved breed to combat this problem.

These breeds are the transgenic breeds which have more salivary phytase helping them to produce manure with low phosphorous capacity. Any transgenic animal is an animal that carries a gene from another animal. This foreign gene has been deliberately incorporated in their genome. A methodology known as recombinant DNA methodology is used to construct these foreign genes. These transgenic animals are made to increase and make more effective certain microbial activities like milk production and digestion.

This has been done to pig production as the breed is proved to have salivary phytase for effective breakdown of phosphorous.  Genetic engineers worked their way out by first trying their luck on rat. They used fetal derived body cells that were transduced with replications defective vectors. These defective vectors contained EGFP ().these cells were to deepen into a solution of colchicine that is known to induce a multiplication factor on cells. The treated cells were used as donor nuclei for nuclear transfer.

The transferred cell was passed through electric pulses that were an activation factor. This gave it a high multiplication rate of 62.5% twelve hours after activation. The nuclear transfer and exposure to electric pulses led to condensation of chromosome by 0.5% due to the exposure of the cell to the colchicine solution, most of the embryos were diploid. After two hours of the