Transgenic livestock made easy

The ability to transfer (trans)genes into the germline of domestic animals is both exciting and challenging. Many believe that this biotechnology has huge potential to benefit both farm animals and humans. However, despite several encouraging projects, overall transgenesis in livestock has been severely restricted by the gross inefficiencies associated with the methodology. Simply put, the generation of transgenic livestock is very costly. In turn, this has limited the range of studies using transgenic farm animals. A recent paper, by describing what can only be termed as the dramatically efficient generation of transgenic pigs, changes everything. We can now look forward to an expansion of the use of transgenic livestock, quicker results and more progress towards realizing the exciting potential that transgenic livestock offer.