Scientists clone sheep with ‘healthy fats’

April 25, 2012

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Chinese scientists cloned a sheep genetically modified with healthy fat in its flesh.

Scientists cloned the sheep genetically modified containing a ‘good’ type of fat found naturally in nuts, seeds, fish and green leafy vegetables that helps reduce the risk of heart attacks and cardiovascular disease.

‘Peng Peng’, which has a gene for fat worms, weighed 5.74 kg at birth on March 26 in a laboratory in Xinjiang, western China.

The scientist Du Yutao of Institute Beijing Genomics (BGI) in Shenzhen said, “It is growing very well and is very healthy, like a normal sheep.”

Du and his colleagues inserted the gene that is linked to the production of polyunsaturated fatty acids in a donor cell taken from the ear of Merino sheep.

The cell is inserted into an unfertilized egg and implanted into the uterus of a surrogate mother sheep.

China, which has to feed 22 percent of world population but has only 7 percent of arable land in the world, spent a lot of resources in recent years to increase domestic production of grains, meat and other foodstuffs.