New Genomic Techniques (NGT) in animals and their agri/food/feed products

Abstract

This report presents a review of the commercial and pre-commercial stage applications of new genomic technologies (NGT) applied to farm animals and their agri/food/feed products. Additionally, a literature review was performed to compile a comprehensive listing of peer-reviewed research and development stage gene edited animals for food and agricultural applications. A total of 195 publications resulting in live animals were compiled. To date, several developed or ongoing research applications have been authorized for commerce, or judged to be "non-GMO" hence conventional, in at least one country including knockout tiger pufferfish and red sea bream in Japan; tilapia, cattle, pigs and horses in Argentina; cattle and tilapia in Brazil; and two gene-edited cattle were granted enforcement discretion in the United States meaning their products can enter the food supply. One application, the targeted exon deletion of a gene resulting in porcine respiratory and reproductive syndrome virus resistance in pigs is formally in the precommercial stage. There are proof-of-concept applications in multiple food species testing gene targets for traits of commercial interest. The most common trait category targeted was meat and fibre yield (31%), followed by reproduction (24%), biotic stress (18%), multiple traits (7%), colour (6%), production of hypoallergenic products (5%), product quality (4%), abiotic stress (1%), and other (4%). The majority of these were SDN-1 applications using Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)/Cas9 to introduce small insertions and deletions to inactivate a gene. The large number of applications focused on reproduction is due in part to interest in both single-sex offspring in numerous industries (e.g. females in the case of egg production), and infertility coupled with germline complementation chimeras (where germline-competent donor cells are used to replace the germline of an otherwise sterile host of a different genetic background) in multiple species including finfish, chickens, cattle, goats, and pigs.