The chicken may be getting an upgrade.
In a scientific first, U.K. researchers have used gene editing technology to create poultry that’s partially resistant to bird flu infection, according to a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications.
It’s no bionic chicken. But study authors say growing disease-resistant chickens in the lab is an important first step to giving farmers a tool to combat bird flu, which wiped out tens of millions of chickens amid an H5N1 outbreak over the past two years
Though experts say gene editing in poultry could have many benefits, they also warn that more research must be done to prevent possible unintended consequences.
“It’s still very early stages in terms of getting this up and running to chickens worldwide, but it’s a really neat first step,” said Ceili Peng, a doctoral student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is working to encode heritable resistance to diseases in animals.
But Peng is aware of the consequences of pushing forward too quickly.