Minnesota Science
Vol. 49, No. 1
Biotech Meets Traditional Breeding And Everyone Wins
by Larry Etkin
Hype and hope for biotechnology are well mixed in the popular press. And while controversies over hormones in food and cross?species hybrids capture public imagination and indignation, real progress is being made on less publicized work on tools to simply eliminate the haphazardness of traditional breeding.
The plants and animals we consume are largely the products of laborious breeding by our ancestors. Increased yields, enhanced quality, improved docility . . . all came through centuries of painstaking, traditional breeding for observable characteristics, called phenotypes. You wanted bigger seed heads? You saved the seed of only the biggest headed plants for next year's crop. To get more milk from cows, you kept only the best milk producers for breeding.
But breeding for observable characteristics is always a long term project. Improvements from year to year often can barely be measured. Also, sometimes undesirable traits get mixed and reinforced with good ones, and you have to start over from near the beginning.
Now, with new tools of biotechnology, breeding based on phenotypes is being replaced with precision selection for traits, based on the genetic building blocks of life. This technology is being developed at the FABCenter, the University of Minnesota's Food Animal Biotechnology Center.
The new tools of molecular biology help animal and plant breeders minimize the interactions among visible characteristics, and precisely select traits to improve through otherwise traditional breeding. There have already been significant successes, such as a test for porcine stress syndrome.
FABCenter is a point of first contact with food animal producers throughout Minnesota and across the United States. who are trying to link the laboratory bench with the barn, to get new knowledge out to the animal breeders.
Gene mapping is the foundation of how it's done, and FABCenter is a global leader in the development of genetic maps and biotechnology for food animals, particularly for swine and poultry.
These genetic "road maps" help us narrow in on the parts of an animal's genetic makeup associated with a particular characteristic. It can help us more quickly breed a characteristic into or out of a herd or flock of animals. It can help us enhance positive characteristics, such as quicker growth, or eliminate undesirable characteristics such as susceptibility to disease.
FABCenter research uses an arsenal of biotechnology tools to identify sections of genes associated with characteristics producers want to reinforce or eliminate. A second group of tools lets them test animals for a gene's presence or absence. The result is precision breeding that can, for instance, totally eliminate porcine stress syndrome from breeding herds of pigs.
The biotechnology behind the success of modern genetically based animal breeding is the subject of a new experiment station publication. "Mapping the Pig Genome: A practical Primer," uses the FABCenter's research on pigs to explain, in quite plain language, how and why all this is done. Use the form on the back page to order a copy.
PHOTO CUTLINE: Gene maps have made it possible to totally eliminate some undesirable
characteristics from animal herds or flocks, such as susceptibility to porcine
stress syndrome.