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Safety assessment of sFat-1 transgenic pigs by detecting their co-habitant microbe in intestinal tract

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Abstract

Transgenic pigs containing sFat-1 (synthesized fatty acid desaturase-1) gene were produced by DNA microinjection. The meat of these pigs contain ω-3 unsaturated fatty acid which is beneficial to the health of human being. The aim of this study is to assess the effects of expression of sFat-1 in pig on the health of animal themselves and on the safety of environment from the angle of the changes in microbe population of pig intestinal tract. Four F1 male semi-sibling of sFat-1 transgenic pigs and four F1 female semi-sibling of sFat-1 transgenic pigs were used as experimental animals, together with their none transgenic siblings as control animals. For inspection of any change in populations of microbial flora in various parts of intestinal tract and feces of sFat-1 transgenic pigs total aerobe, total anaerobe, main beneficial bacteria and main harmful bacteria were cultured and analyzed. At the same time foreign gene drift was assessed by PCR amplifying foreign fragment in samples of total aerobe and total anaerobe. Results indicated that in comparison with control pig microbe population of various species in different parts of intestinal tract and feces of sFat-1 transgenic pig remained unchanged and foreign gene sequence could not be detected in DNA of total aerobe and total anaerobe. In conclusion, the data of this study suggest that microbe population in intestinal tract and feces of transgenic pig was not influenced by the expression of transferred foreign gene sFat-1 and also foreign gene drifting from animal genome to microbial genome must be a rare incident.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish especially to thank all the animal technicians in Wuhan experimental farms for help with samples collection and to Prof. Yongfu Chen, Prof. Jian Hou, Prof. Jinzeng Yang for valuable comments and suggestions on the manuscript and to Qingxue Liu, Jun Yang and Linqin Liu for excellent technical assistance. This work was supported by National Transgenic Project of China, National Natural Science Foundation of China, National 863 Project of China and National Key Basic Research Projects of China.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory for Farm Animal Genetic Resources and Utilization of Ministry of Agriculture of China and Inspection Test Center for Biosafety of Genetically Modified Animal and Feed (Beijing) of Ministry of Agriculture of China, Institute of Animal Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100193, People’s Republic of China

    Maoxue Tang, Wenke Cheng, Erhui Jin, Shulin Yang, Wentao Cui & Kui Li

  2. Key Laboratory of Animal Embryo and Molecular Breeding of Hubei Province, Institute of Veterinary and Animal Science, Hubei Academy of Agriculture Sciences, Wuhan, 430064, People’s Republic of China

    Xinmin Zheng

  3. Beijing Institute of Biotechnology, Beijing, 100071, China

    Hongxing Chen

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  1. Maoxue Tang
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  2. Xinmin Zheng
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  3. Wenke Cheng
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  4. Erhui Jin
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  5. Hongxing Chen
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  6. Shulin Yang
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  7. Wentao Cui
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  8. Kui Li
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Wentao Cui.

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Tang, M., Zheng, X., Cheng, W. et al. Safety assessment of sFat-1 transgenic pigs by detecting their co-habitant microbe in intestinal tract. Transgenic Res 20, 749–758 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11248-010-9457-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11248-010-9457-7

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