Chapter 2

The use of Biotechnology in

Animal Production
• Biotechnology manipulating biological systems for the benefit of
mankind.
• Biotechnology is offering extraordinary opportunities for
increasing agricultural productivity and for protecting the
environment through reduced use of agro-chemicals.
• Among agricultural and allied fields, animal production and
health have probably benefitted the most from biotechnology.

• But successful application of biotechnology has generally been

limited to developed countries.
• The major thrust in biotechnology research is currently directed
at solving immediate problems of industrialised countries, with
major investments coming from transnational companies.

• The importance of biotechnology and its relevance is only slowly

being accepted by policy makers in developing countries.
 Application of biotechnology in Disease control
• the diagnosis of livestock diseases, and genetically transmitted
conditions which damage health and productivity.
• Monoclonal antibody
• Nucleic acid hybridisation (NAD) & restriction endonuclease
mapping (REM)
Viral diseases Bacterial diseases
Rinderpest Cowdriosis
Peste des petite ruminants Contagious bovine pleuropneumonia
Bluetongue Contagious agalactia
African horse sickness Contagious caprine
pleuropneumonia
Foot-and-mouth disease Anaplasmosis (A. centrale and A.
marginale)
Vesicular stomatitis Haemorrhagic septicemia (only MAB
available)
• Conventional means of controlling major livestock diseases include
chemotherapy, vector control, vaccination, slaughter of infected
stock, and other management practices not yet efficient

• Produce cheaper and more efficient drugs is essential

• In cases where a natural source material is prohibitively expensive,

genetic engineering (in microbial or tissue culture systems) can be
used to produce drugs of high value for humans or animals.
• Eg.
• insulin,
• human growth hormone and
• tissue plasminogen activator (used in treating heart disease).
 Reproductive Biotechnology
• Livestock contribute directly to the livelihood of human being.
Several reproductive technologies have been employed to
achieve this.
• Assisted reproductive biotechnologies has been introduced :
– to overcome reproductive problems,
– to increase the offspring from selected sire and dam and
– to reduce the generation intervals in farm animals.
• The successful reproductive technologies such as AI and ET need
be applied on a large scale
• Emerging biotechnologies such as MOET, IVF and Cloning
provides powerful tool for rapidly changing the animal
populations, genetically
• Artificial insemination
• Artificial insemination is manual introduction of fresh or frozen
semen into the reproductive tract of an ovulating female to
achieve pregnancy.
• Embryo transfer
• Embryo transfer (ET) is a technique by which embryos are
collected from a donor female and are transferred to recipient
females, which serve as surrogate mothers for the remainder of
pregnancy.
• In Vitro Production of farm animal Embryo
• Each ovary contains hundreds of thousands of oocytes (eggs) at
birth many thousands undergo artesian and are lost starting
before birth.
• This tremendous loss of genetic material could be salvaged by
harvesting oocytes from the ovary and using IVP techniques.
• Bovine IVP is now a reasonably efficient procedure through
transvaginal ultrasound guided oocyte aspiration at frequent
intervals in combination with in vitro fertilization (IVF) in
improving the yield of embryos from designated donors

• IVF has also been used to produce thousands of embryos needed

for scientific research; including efforts to produce embryonic
stem cells has great hopes of human medicine lie in use of pigs as
organ donors in xenotransplantation.

• IVF has the potential, under appropriate conditions, to increase

the annual rate of genetic progress by 10-30% when compared to
using MOET
 Estrous synchronization
• Estrous synchronization is bringing a group of animals into heat
simultaneously,
• It is done to assist the producer in scheduling animal breeding and
birthing.
– Synchronization usually involves the use of prostaglandin,
progestin, or a combination of the two.
– The hormone prostaglandin (PGF2)causes the corpus luteum
to stop producing progesterone, which allows the animal to
come into estrus.
– The hormone progestin has the effect of keeping progesterone
levels high, holding animals in an extended diestrus.
– When the progestin source is removed, the animal quickly
comes into estrus
 Semen sexing
• Semen sexing is the process of separating semen containing the X and
Y sex chromosomes
• Sexed semen is semen that has been separated to contain sperm that
will most likely produce a male or female offspring.
• Sexed semen is used to produce offspring of the desired sex from a
particular breeding in order to take advantage of difference in the
value of males and daughters for specific marketing purposes. 
Cloning (non-sexual reproduction)
• Cloning the process of creating a cell, tissue line or even a
complete organism from one single cell.
• Clones of entire organisms can be produced by embryo splitting or
nuclear transfer, including nuclei from blastomeres, somatic cells
and stem cells
• In cloning, offspring are genetically identical to their single parent.
Such offspring are the products of “asexual” reproduction.
 Application of Biotechnology in Growth rate of Livestock

• Bovine somatotropin is a natural occurring growth hormone

produced in the pituitary gland in the endocrine system.

• Recombinant bovine somatotropin (BST) is a genetically engineered

synthetic analog of the natural growth hormone

• Porcine somatotropin (PST) and recombinant growth hormone

stimulatory peptides (e.g. growth hormone releasing factor, GRF)
along with BST have been shown to increase growth rates by 8-38%
in cattle, sheep and pigs.

• In almost all cases, administration of exogenous growth hormones

have been associated with increased carcass protein and reduced
carcass fat
 Application of Biotechnology in Changing Milk Composition

• Cow’s milk is made up of water, sugar, fat, proteins, vitamins and

minerals.
• Casein makes up about 80% of the total protein in milk.

• It is one of the most valuable components of milk because of its

nutritional value and processing properties.
• Casein is particularly important in cheese making.

• Casein proteins come in 4 different variants: alpha-s1, alpha-s2, beta

and kappa casein. Each variant has its own amino acid composition,
genetic variations and functional properties.

• These 4 casein variants combine to form a structure called a micelle.

• Micelles are dispersed in the water phase of milk and give milk its
white colour
• Transgenic cows had extra bovine (cow) kappa casein genes inserted
in their genome.
• This resulted in increased kappa casein in their milk
• The percentage of total casein in milk determines the cheese yield.
Increased kappa and beta casein levels in milk are associated with
improved heat stability, better cheese making properties and higher
calcium content

• In the future, modified milk from transgenic cows could be used to:
 benefit animal health, for example, by improving growth and
survival of calves
 prevent animal diseases, such as mastitis
 make milk with human health benefits
 assist milk processing into dairy products.
 Insulin production

• Production of genetically engineered human insulin was one of the

first breakthroughs of biotechnology in the pharmaceutical industry.

• Insulin was first produced in Escherichia coli through recombinant

DNA technology in 1978.

• This was done by producing artificial genes for each of the two
protein chains that comprise the insulin molecule and inserting them
into a plasmid.
• It is widely used today as a therapeutic mechanism against patients
suffering from diabetes mellitus (DM).
• More recently, researchers have succeeded in introducing the gene
for human insulin into plants and in producing insulin in them, to be
specific safflower.
 This technique is anticipated to reduce production costs thus
affordable to patients.
• Production of Human Growth Hormone

It was first done in 1979 in Gentech using recombinant DNA

technology.
• These scientists produced human growth hormone by inserting
DNA coding for human growth hormone into a plasmid that was
implanted in Escherichia coli bacteria.
• The gene that was inserted into the plasmid was created by
reverse transcription of the mRNA found in pituitary glands to
complementary DNA.
• Prior to this development, human growth hormone was extracted
from the pituitary glands of cadavers, as animal growth
hormones have no therapeutic value in humans.
• Production of Antibiotics

Antibiotics are agents that kill bacteria, fungi and other

compounds.
• In the previous years, the search for antibiotics has been largely
restricted to well-known compound classes active against a
standard set of drug tests.

• Recent advances in genomics have provided an opportunity to

expand the range of potential drug targets and

• facilitated a fundamental shift from direct antimicrobial

screening programs toward rational target-based strategies.
• Bio-pharming

• The term molecular pharming refers to the use of genetic engineering to insert
genes that code for useful pharmaceuticals into host animals or plants that would
otherwise not express those genes, thus creating a genetically modified organism
(GMO).

 This method has also been used to produce useful products in the pharmaceutical
industries to produce a number of therapies to different diseases.

 Unlike the usual genetic engineering processes, this method is considered less
demanding in terms of infrastructure and costs.

 The drug is called ATryn, which is an antithrombin protein purified from the milk of
genetically modified goats.

 Biotechnologies in animal nutrition
 Increasing digestibility of low-quality of forages (E.g.Cellulose and
Hemicellulose)
 lignase enzyme produced by the soft-rot fungus
 Improving nutritive value of cereals (e.g. barley is low in Iysine and
threonine)
 Genetic modification through insertion of genes into rice protoplasts
 Removing anti-nutritive factors from feeds
 tannins, phytohaemagglutinins and cyanogens in legumes,
 glucosinolates, tannins and sanapine in oilseed rape (Brassica napus) and other
compounds in feeds belonging to the Brassica group
 Genetic engeenaring and conventional breeding
 Transgenic rumen microbes
 Improving nutritive value of conserved feed (Silage making with lactic acid bacteria
 Improving rumen function (transgenic bacteria)
 Marker-Assisted Selection
• The discovery and identification of DNA
sequences or molecular markers associated with
important animal traits has various applications
that includes:
• Trait improvement,
• Heritability determination (Parentage),
• genotype verification,
• Product traceability, and
• Screening for undesirable genes
 Waste Treatment
• Short chain fatty acids are the main sources of the bad
odor of swine wastes
• A bacterium, Rhodopseudomonas capsulata, has the
ability to grow rapidly in simple synthetic media.

• It is being used in advanced swine waste treatment

plants in both Japan and Korea.

• The reduction after treatment can be used as a safe

organic fertilizer
End