Frankenstein's Cat: Cuddling Up to Biotech's Brave New Beasts (7 page)

In fact, Murray and Maga’s goats, which have not shown any signs of strange ailments or deformities, may be even
healthier
than their nontransgenic brethren. With higher concentrations of bacteria-busting lysozyme in their milk, the transgenic goats have healthier udders and fewer signs of infection, according to early data.

Other scientists are engineering livestock specifically to make them more resistant to disease. Several labs, for instance, have created cows that lack prions, the infectious proteins that can cause mad cow disease. In one approach, researchers used a technique called RNA interference. Messenger RNA, or mRNA, is essential for protein production—it carries the gene’s instructions from the nucleus to the part of the cell where proteins are actually manufactured. Scientists have discovered that they can silence genes by injecting into a cell small molecules that destroy or disable mRNA while it’s in transit. The RNA is thus not able to deliver its instructions to the cell’s protein factories (it’s as though the letter gets lost in the mail) and the protein is not produced. By designing molecules that target certain stretches of mRNA, scientists can silence specific genes and prevent the production of select proteins, such as prions. The prion-free cattle that result may be immune to mad cow disease.

*   *   *

Pharming continues to march forward. Biotech companies around the world are working on the next generation of transgenic dairy animals, capable of producing all sorts of crucial human antibodies, clotting factors, and other therapeutic proteins in their milk. Several teams of Chinese scientists have engineered cows that make milk with special nutritional properties, such as elevated levels of heart-healthy omega 3 fatty acids or reduced levels of hard-to-digest lactose. Researchers in some labs are working on producing transgenic animal drugs in other bodily fluids, such as blood, urine, and semen. (Apparently, a single boar ejaculation can contain a whopping 9 grams of protein. Talk about a “yuck factor.”) A team of Japanese biologists got transgenic silkworms to spin cocoons containing human collagen. And a few researchers are putting their eggs in an entirely different basket: chickens. Thanks to our selective breeding for master layers, one hen can lay 330 eggs, each of which contains 3.5 grams of protein, in a single year. What if we gave these egg-making superstars jobs in the pharmaceutical industry? Scientists at Scotland’s Roslin Institute have created feathered fowl that lay eggs containing compounds used to treat skin cancer and multiple sclerosis. Before long, we could all be cracking eggs for the cure.

The latest techniques are also making it possible to edit animal genomes with unprecedented precision. “The way we’ve been making transgenics up until now is really kind of crude,” Alison Van Eenennaam, a geneticist at UC Davis, confesses. “You inject a bit of DNA and hope like hell it integrates somewhere on the genome. There are new technologies that are coming along that will allow us to go in and make very specific edits to the genome.” One approach relies on what’s known as “zinc finger nucleases”—lab-made proteins that act as little molecular scissors, cutting a strand of DNA at a specific location. Doing so means that researchers can disable one particular gene or slip a transgene into the genome in just the right spot. Today, scientists are far better equipped to control how a foreign gene is inserted and expressed than they were in the 1980s, which may help us engineer animals with fewer unwanted side effects.

Meanwhile, the emerging field of synthetic biology—in which scientists engineer new genes, cells, and biological systems from scratch—could eventually provide another way to design animals to our exact specifications. It’s a young field, but it’s moving fast; in 2010, the biologist J. Craig Venter announced that he had created a partially synthetic organism capable of replicating itself. Venter’s team engineered the single-celled organism by building a genome that contained genes derived from a common species of bacteria as well as some entirely novel man-made stretches of DNA. (These custom-designed genetic sequences spelled out coded versions of the researchers’ names as well as several famous quotations.) They inserted this genome into the cell of a different bacterial species, where it sprang into action, taking control of all cellular functions. Synthetic biology may yield new ways to build microbes—and, eventually, more complex life-forms—capable of producing drugs, biofuels, and other valuable compounds. (Of course, all the animal welfare, environmental contamination, and human safety concerns that accompany moving single genes around the animal kingdom are magnified a thousandfold when we consider the prospect of assembling an entire genome from scratch.)

Despite the scientific advances, political, economic, and social factors will keep some nations from embracing genetic engineering. European governments seem poised to reject products made by engineered animals, and the outlook in Canada and the United States is iffy. In 2012, Canadian researchers were forced to abandon fifteen years of research on an eco-friendly pig after their funding ran out. Researchers at the University of Guelph in Ontario had already engineered the animals, which they dubbed Enviropigs, to excrete less phosphorus, a common cause of water pollution. When phosphorus from animal manure makes its way into streams, lakes, and rivers, algae populations explode; this algal overgrowth can poison the water and kill fish and other aquatic organisms. Despite the pigs’ potential, the scientific team was unable to find a company willing to bring them to market, and the animals were euthanized in May 2012. Animal rights activists had launched a campaign to save the pigs, and many people contacted the researchers offering to adopt the swine. But the scientists’ hands were tied; regulations simply don’t permit unapproved, experimental genetically modified animals to be released from a secure laboratory environment.

If other nations start approving, and possibly exporting, transgenic animal products, it will put pressure on the United States, Canada, and other nations to be more accepting of genetically engineered organisms. A careful review of transgenic animals is essential and can go a long way toward easing public anxiety, but it would be unfortunate if fears about genetic engineering, or arguments that the technology is inherently wrong, spurred governments to issue blanket moratoriums or let safe, useful animals languish in regulatory purgatory. That’s what’s happened to the AquAdvantage salmon, which the FDA has still not approved, despite concluding that the fish pose minimal danger to us or the environment. If the agency ultimately rejects the fish—or fails to approve them before AquaBounty runs out of money—it will have a chilling effect on biotechnological innovation in the United States, discouraging other scientists and entrepreneurs from developing new kinds of transgenic animals.

That would be a shame. Rejecting genetic engineering wholesale means that we’ll lose the good along with the bad. And when it comes right down to it, as Murray says, “I don’t think anybody in the world will turn down a drug from a transgenic animal if they need it or their loved ones need it. Or a transplant, if they need it.” It’s easy to oppose biotechnology in the abstract, but when that technology can save your life, grand pronouncements about scientific evils tend to dissolve. Most of us would do a lot more than drink transgenic goat milk to have even one more day with our loved ones.

Or, in some cases, to spend more time with our beloved pets.

3. Double Trouble

Futuristic fantasies come in all shapes and sizes. Some of us may look forward to the day when we can bring home animals engineered to perform astonishing feats—a cat that glows while resting quietly on the couch or a cow that makes medicinal milk as it grazes in the backyard. For others, the dream might more closely resemble a hulking family man strolling into his local mall to pick up a replacement pet. That’s the scenario that plays out in
The Sixth Day
, a sci-fi thriller set in the near future. In the movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character faces the sudden death of the family dog, Oliver. In response, he simply goes shopping, heading to a store called RePet, where a smarmy salesman offers to make Oliver’s exact genetic duplicate. “Your RePet Oliver will be exactly the same dog,” the salesman promises. “He’ll know all the same tricks you taught him, he’ll remember where all the bones are buried. He won’t even know he’s a clone.”

In 2001, just a year after the film’s release, a modified version of this sci-fi scene sprang to life when the world’s first cloned housecat was born. The first cloned dog came four years later. Since then, animal lovers have welcomed Tabouli and Baba Ganoush (copies of a Bengal cat named Tahini), Lancelot Encore (the double of a yellow Lab named Lancelot), and a kennelful of other cloned kittens and pups into the world. The owners of these animals didn’t want fanciful new animals—they simply wanted to re-create the old. It’s an understandable impulse, familiar to anyone who’s lost a cherished pet, and though just a handful of wealthy owners have had their animals cloned so far, as the science improves and the price drops, the market will grow.

If only bringing an animal back to life were as easy as that RePet salesman made it seem. Cloning is still a young, experimental technology—and one that raises serious animal welfare concerns. So before we order up our creature copies, we need to ask ourselves some thorny questions about what we can really expect from a DNA double and what costs we’re willing to bear to get one.

*   *   *

We all know about the traditional, time-tested approach to baby-making: A sperm cell, bearing your father’s DNA, meets an egg cell, which carries genetic code from your mother. When the sperm fertilizes the egg, the DNA mingles, and the embryo that results—the baby blastocyst that grows up to be you—is a biological cocktail. Half of the genes inside your cells can be traced back to Mommy dearest, while the other half come via dear old Dad. Cloning takes the normal rules of reproduction and turns them on their head; clones receive their entire biological inheritance from just one donor. Scientists can take a single cell from an animal’s body—just the tiniest bit of skin, blood, or tissue—and use the DNA it contains to build a brand-new embryo. It’s like taking the set of genetic instructions that gave rise to your mother, and plopping them, unchanged, into a fetus. A clone is essentially an identical twin born years after its genetic double.

The world of cloning changed forever on July 5, 1996, with the birth of a little lamb named Dolly. When Dolly was born, scientists had already cloned embryos, making exact genetic copies of unborn frogs, mice, and cows, but Dolly was revolutionary because she was the first clone of an adult mammal. Scientists at Scotland’s Roslin Institute created her using a small tissue sample taken from a six-year-old ewe’s mammary gland. The ewe had died years earlier, but the researchers just happened to have some of her preserved cells on hand, and they transferred the DNA from these cells into new sheep eggs. One of these eggs developed into a lamb that the researchers named Dolly (an homage to another fine mammary specimen: the country singer Dolly Parton).

Dolly was proof positive that researchers could take a small bit of flesh from a fully grown animal and create its identical twin, and her birth ushered in exciting possibilities in the reproductive sciences. Farmers and ranchers are constantly seeking to extend the genetic reach of their highest-performing animals, breeding like with like to create offspring that they hope will inherit the same milk-swollen udders or speedy legs. Cloning raises the prospect of making
exact
genetic copies of known performers, of creating perfect replicas of champion steers or horses that have proven their talents on the racetrack.

After Dolly’s birth, scientists at Texas A&M University, in College Station, immediately recognized the implications. Like just about everything else, animal agriculture is bigger in Texas—the state has more cows than any other and the value of its livestock products ranks first in the nation—and A&M has an animal science department befitting this mammoth industry. The school has more than 700 acres dedicated to raising and researching cows, horses, sheep, and goats, and a dedicated Reproductive Sciences Laboratory, where scientists hone techniques—from artificial insemination to in vitro fertilization—that can help farmers manage the reproduction of their herds. When cloning came along, it gave the researchers a new tool for creating highly valuable livestock. In the years that followed Dolly’s birth, the scientists at the lab proved cloning’s potential, successfully carbon-copying a white-tailed deer, an Angus bull, a stallion, several litters of pigs, and more.

Along the way, A&M’s researchers got involved in an endeavor they hadn’t anticipated. Six months after Dolly’s birth made international news, a man named Lou Hawthorne started recruiting reproductive scientists from America’s laboratories. Hawthorne represented a wealthy client with an ambitious request: He wanted to clone a spayed dog named Missy, a border collie mix with a white face and silky gray coat. (Hawthorne’s initially anonymous client was later revealed to be John Sperling, an eccentric billionaire who founded the for-profit University of Phoenix and has also bankrolled human longevity research. Missy belonged to Joan Hawthorne, Lou’s mother and Sperling’s longtime friend and lover.)

After considering a number of labs, Hawthorne picked a team of researchers at A&M for the dog duplication job. Mark Westhusin, a veterinary physiologist who ran the Reproductive Sciences Laboratory, would lead the cloning effort, and Sperling would fund the endeavor, to the tune of $3.7 million. When the Missyplicity Project was announced in 1998, pet owners flooded A&M with phone calls, asking about having their own dogs and cats cloned. It turned out that Sperling wasn’t the only one who thought he had a special companion. As Hawthorne would later write: “Millions of people believe they have a one-in-a-million pet.”

We no longer treat our pets as mere animals. We celebrate their birthdays and give them Christmas presents, let them lounge on the leather couch and sleep on the down comforter. Many of us consider our pets to be full-fledged members of the family, and their deaths prompt full-fledged outpourings of grief. We can seek the aid of pet bereavement counselors and choose from specialized caskets, headstones, and urns designed to send Fluffy off to the afterlife in style. So when word leaked out that researchers were trying to clone dogs, it naturally fueled hopes that we’d never have to let go of that one special friend, re-creating it—or at least its genetic double—over and over again.