Transgenic Animals Archive

Cloning of Animals

Although the cloning of Dolly the sheep in 1996 created a major furor in the media, from a scientific viewpoint it was a relatively small step in a developing technology. Cloning animals relies on the technique of nuclear transplantation . …

Trangenic Insects

  Several insects can now be genetically modified. The fruit fly Drosophila has been investigated at the molecular level for a long time and, not surprisingly, methods exist for introducing novel genetic material into these flies. P elements are transposons …

Transgenic Mosquitoes

The three diseases that kill most people are acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), tuberculosis, and malaria. Each year, malaria infects some 300 to 500 million people and kills around 2 million, mostly African children. The Plasmodium parasite is transmitted by mosquitoes—as …

Knockout Mice for Medical Research

Transgenic animals, mostly mice, are of great value in the genetic analysis of inherited diseases and cancer. Here we are interested not so much in adding a cloned transgene as in discovering the function of genes already present. The general …

Transgenic Animals

NEW AND IMPROVED ANIMALS For thousands of years people have improved crop plants and domestic animals by selective breeding, mostly at a trial-and-error level. Woollier sheep and smarter sheep dogs have both been improved through many generations of selective breeding. …