Transgenic Mice and Other Animals, Growth Hormone, Molecular Farming, Molecular Pharming, Bioreactors

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	Transgenic Mice and Other Animals - One of the first reports of transgenic animals published in December, 1982, involved transfer of growth hormone (GH) gene (from rat) fused to the promoter for the mouse metallothionein 1 (MT) gene. Since then many transgenic animals, including those in cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, rabbits, chickens and fish have been produced and will be utilized in future for a variety of purposes including
(i) their efficiency in utilizing feed; (ii) ability to give leaner meat, (iii) their ability to grow to marketable size sooner and (iv) their resistance to certain diseases. More than this, recently efforts are being made to use transgenic animals as living bioreactors. Transgenic animals produced for this purpose will secrete valuable recombinant proteins and pharmaceuticals into their milk, blood and urine which can be used for extraction of these drugs. This new possibility of manufacturing drugs through transgenic animals is often described as 'molecular farming' or 'molecular pharming'. Although, initially many experiments leading to the production of transgenic animals did not give commercially attractive results, success has been obtained in some recent cases. Some of these cases will be discussed.