A short visit to the Bayanbuluk Grassland in the Tianshan Mountains, Xinjiang, PRC, revealed a number of environmental and livestock production problems, including grassland degradation, loss of grassland biodiversity...A short visit to the Bayanbuluk Grassland in the Tianshan Mountains, Xinjiang, PRC, revealed a number of environmental and livestock production problems, including grassland degradation, loss of grassland biodiversity, soil erosion and flash flooding downstream, decreased pasture productivity, and poor livestock nutrition (especially in winter) leading to stock losses and flocks and herds of low productivity. This paper describes those problems and then suggests some solutions. Short duration, high intensity grazing could be one of the solutions to both improving grassland condition and improving livestock nutrition. Local production of fodder crops for feeding in winter and spring deserves testing, using adapted strains of Alfalfa (Medicago sativa) and trialling fodder root crop production. It is important to realise that the land management objectives of scientists, administrators, herders and farmers may be similar, and that there are opportunities for land improvement through working together.展开更多
Selecting beneficial DNA variants is the main goal of animal breeding.However,this process is inherently inefficient because each animal only carries a fraction of all desirable variants.Genome editing technology with...Selecting beneficial DNA variants is the main goal of animal breeding.However,this process is inherently inefficient because each animal only carries a fraction of all desirable variants.Genome editing technology with its ability to directly introduce beneficial sequence variants offers new opportunities to modernize animal breeding by overcoming this biological limitation and accelerating genetic gains.To realize rapid genetic gain,precise edits need to be introduced into genomicallyselected embryos,which minimizes the genetic lag.However,embryo-mediated precision editing by homology-directed repair(HDR)mechanisms is currently an inefficient process that often produces mosaic embryos and greatly limits the numbers of available edited embryos.This review provides a summary of genome editing in bovine embryos and proposes an embryo-mediated accelerated breeding scheme that overcomes the present efficiency limitations of HDR editing in bovine embryos.It integrates embryo-based genomic selection with precise multi-editing and uses embryonic cloning with elite edited blastomeres or embryonic pluripotent stem cells to resolve mosaicism,enable multiplex editing and multiply rare elite genotypes.Such a breeding strategy would enable a more targeted,accelerated approach for livestock improvement that allows stacking of beneficial variants,even including novel traits from outside the breeding population,in the most recent elite genetic background,essentially within a single generation.展开更多
文摘A short visit to the Bayanbuluk Grassland in the Tianshan Mountains, Xinjiang, PRC, revealed a number of environmental and livestock production problems, including grassland degradation, loss of grassland biodiversity, soil erosion and flash flooding downstream, decreased pasture productivity, and poor livestock nutrition (especially in winter) leading to stock losses and flocks and herds of low productivity. This paper describes those problems and then suggests some solutions. Short duration, high intensity grazing could be one of the solutions to both improving grassland condition and improving livestock nutrition. Local production of fodder crops for feeding in winter and spring deserves testing, using adapted strains of Alfalfa (Medicago sativa) and trialling fodder root crop production. It is important to realise that the land management objectives of scientists, administrators, herders and farmers may be similar, and that there are opportunities for land improvement through working together.
基金funded by AgResearch and the Ministry of BusinessInnovation and Employment。
文摘Selecting beneficial DNA variants is the main goal of animal breeding.However,this process is inherently inefficient because each animal only carries a fraction of all desirable variants.Genome editing technology with its ability to directly introduce beneficial sequence variants offers new opportunities to modernize animal breeding by overcoming this biological limitation and accelerating genetic gains.To realize rapid genetic gain,precise edits need to be introduced into genomicallyselected embryos,which minimizes the genetic lag.However,embryo-mediated precision editing by homology-directed repair(HDR)mechanisms is currently an inefficient process that often produces mosaic embryos and greatly limits the numbers of available edited embryos.This review provides a summary of genome editing in bovine embryos and proposes an embryo-mediated accelerated breeding scheme that overcomes the present efficiency limitations of HDR editing in bovine embryos.It integrates embryo-based genomic selection with precise multi-editing and uses embryonic cloning with elite edited blastomeres or embryonic pluripotent stem cells to resolve mosaicism,enable multiplex editing and multiply rare elite genotypes.Such a breeding strategy would enable a more targeted,accelerated approach for livestock improvement that allows stacking of beneficial variants,even including novel traits from outside the breeding population,in the most recent elite genetic background,essentially within a single generation.
