Development of new technologies for male and female livestock Aug 14 at 05:06
The group of Hiroshima University has developed a technology that can produce males and females relatively easily for cattle and swine livestock.
In the livestock industry, there are many cases that require either males or females, such as producing milk from female cows.
Males and females become male if the sex chromosome contained in fertilized sperm is Y-type, and female if X-type, but so far, only a small amount of DNA has been included using expensive equipment There is only a method to measure the difference, and it has not been widely used because it is expensive to produce.
A group of professors Masayuki Shimada from Hiroshima University examined the genes working in sperm in detail, and there is a molecule called “TLR7” that is related to immunity in female sperm. It means that there was no molecule.
By using this molecule as a landmark, the group said that male sperm and female sperm could be easily separated in a test tube, and pigs could produce about 70% of the time as desired. .
Professor Shimada says, “It is a technology that can lead to cost reduction by efficient production. There are ethical problems in human application, but in principle it can be applied in mammals.” The