The association between modern molecular biology and farming seems an unlikely one. But, as Stephen Leese explains how each can benefit from each other.
How can today's farmers, with low and stagnating margins, find use for the relatively costly analytical methods currently on offer from many DNA analytical laboratories?
The answer lies at both ends of the food production chain retailers on the one hand and animal producers on the other.
For many generations, farmers and specifically animal producers have recorded almost every aspect of their animal husbandry, ranging from what the animals have been fed on, which medications have they received to how have they been housed.
breeding strategies
Of course, animal producers have been successfully using breeding strategies to improve the quality of their animals ever since Mendel's first law of genetics was postulated more than 100 years ago. But such programmes have their limitations.
Firstly, it takes time to breed-in desirable traits with a reasonable level of certainty.
Secondly, many of the parameters linked to food quality can only be observed once the animal has been reared and slaughtered, which can lead to time-consuming and costly mistakes.
Thirdly, many of the current breeding strategies, such as linkage strategy, require information from hundreds if not thousands of animals.
And lastly, and possibly most critically, many of the more interesting and desirable traits are complex or polygene in nature, making their location extremely difficult to achieve.
Biopsytec, a European based company founded in 2000 believes to have found a way around almost all of these problems. Biopsytec takes the detailed phenotype recordings of the animal breeders and combines this information with the associated genotypes.
The result is a marker set, which can be used by breeders to select those animals which will pass on the desired trait to their offspring. In this way, breeders can select for specific quality traits such as back muscle fat, marbling and even physiological characteristics of the meat which lead to an improved tenderness or taste.
disease resistance
Other desirable traits such as disease resistance, lend themselves remarkably well to this method, which is also awakening the interest of the manufacturers of animal health products.
The fact is that not all animals in a population get the same disease to the same extent some are simply resistant.
The Biopsytec proprietary technology is based on the well known method of Genomic Mismatch Scanning or GMS combined with alinkage disequilibrium'. This method known by Biopsytec as ILD effectively identifies those areas of the genome which are responsible for the mutations which is where the variations are originating from. The theory states that many mutations can be traced back to one or a few ancestors (Founder effect). The Biopsytec methodology identifies these areas of the genome and creates a marker set.
It does this by taking the DNA of a small number of pairs of animals, which ideally are not closely related to one another. The material is then processed using several specific enzymatic reactions. During one step the DNA of both individuals is hybridised together: in other words, the DNA stretches that belong to the same genome location from both individuals are linked to each other by weak physical forces.
A plant enzyme is used to identify those regions of both genomes which are not completely identical. The enzyme digests these non-matching DNA strands. This process is repeated until what you are left with are those areas aidentical by descent'.
The corresponding DNA should contain the genes, which are responsible for the trait in question. On the basis of this material one can isolate markers, which are close to these genes and which can then be used in managed breeding programs.
Benefits
The benefits of this technology above current methods are threefold:
€ The result is achieved with far fewer index animals (50 pairs instead of 100s or 1000s of animals.
€ Results can be achieved in less time months rather than years.
€ The result itself is characterised by a more exact description of the genotype locations down to 12 cM a 100 fold improvement.
For Klaus Olek, the Chief Scientific Officer of Biopsytec, who has spent almost all of his 30 year career working with the genetic causes of diseases, the Biopsytec ILD technology provides a major breakthrough in enabling modern biotechnology techniques to be used cheaply and quickly in a traditionally low expense industry such as agricultural food production.
"The possible applications for this technology are breathtaking“ states Olek. "One can calculate that a 0.5 per cent improvement in the feed conversion ratio of Europe's livestock has a possible commercial effect of around E100 million per year. A 10 per cent reduction in animals requiring medications could save up to E500 million per year“.
And the value to the leading supermarket chains of being able to offer their customers (and more importantly, their competitor's customers) meat of enhanced quality which ultimately leads to better tasting meals is incalculable.
Enter 37 or at www.scientistlive.com/efood
Stephen Leese is chief financial officer with Biopsytec AG, Berlin, Germany. www.biopsytec.com
