{"id":4899,"date":"2023-10-10T21:12:19","date_gmt":"2023-10-11T02:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=4899"},"modified":"2023-10-10T21:13:48","modified_gmt":"2023-10-11T02:13:48","slug":"how-gene-editing-could-help-curb-the-spread-of-bird-flu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/10\/10\/how-gene-editing-could-help-curb-the-spread-of-bird-flu\/","title":{"rendered":"How gene editing could help curb the spread of bird flu"},"content":{"rendered":"
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MIT Technology Review<\/a> The disease kills millions of birds each year, and it has recently started to spread among mammals too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gene editing could help prevent chickens from catching and spreading bird flu, according to a proof-of-concept study.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Researchers used the gene-editing tool CRISPR to alter the DNA of 10 chickens to resist the bird flu virus and then exposed all of them to a low dose of it. Only one of the 10 chickens caught the virus, and that chicken did not pass it on to any others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat this shows is that there\u2019s a proof of concept that we can use to move toward making chickens resistant to the virus. But we\u2019re not there yet,\u201d Wendy Barclay, a virologist and professor at Imperial College London, who co-led the research, said on a press conference call. The study<\/a> was published today in Nature Communications.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bird flu has killed millions of both wild and farmed birds across the world in recent years. It has increasingly affected mammals as well, raising fears among virologists that the virus could adapt to infect humans.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the chicken study, the team made changes to a protein gene in the birds\u2019 sperm and eggs. This protein, called ANP32A, helps flu viruses attack chickens\u2019 systems. By rearranging the DNA letters of the ANP32A protein, the researchers were able to restrict the flu virus from infecting the chickens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe genetic changes that we made were changes we knew will stop the growth of the virus in the chicken cells,\u201d Alewo Idoko-Akoh, a research fellow at the University of Edinburgh\u2019s Roslin Institute, who was part of the study, explained.         <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MIT Technology Review The disease kills millions of birds each year, and it has recently started to spread among mammals too. Gene editing could help prevent chickens from catching and spreading bird flu, according to a proof-of-concept study.   Researchers used the gene-editing tool CRISPR to alter the DNA of 10 chickens to resist the bird […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-and-tech"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4899"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4900,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4899\/revisions\/4900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}