Transgenic animals and prion diseases

Authors: Wills PR
Publication: New Zealand Veterinary Journal, Volume 43, Issue 2, pp 86-87, Apr 1995
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Animal type: Livestock
Subject Terms: Genetics, Nervous system/neurology, Spongiform encephalopathies, Disease/defect
Article class: Correspondence

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Abstract: The creation and exploitation of transgenic farm animals involve extraordinary potential hazards, which have not been considered in any assessment of risks to the environment and health arising from biotechnological enterprise in agriculture. Animals carrying transgenes from related species may give rise to novel protein forms, which act as infectious agents for as-yet-unknown diseases with unusual modes of transmission. A unique feature of prion diseases, like scrapie in sheep, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, is the apparent absence of genetic material in the infectious inoculum. On the other hand, host genes are involved in determining characteristics of the transmissible agent, which seems to be an aberrant structural isoform of an otherwise normal cellular protein…

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