MIZZOU NEWS

Swine, Genetic Expertise
Attracts National Center

By Jason Jenkins

Note: This story was published originally in the fall 2003 issue of Momentum, the the newsletter for alumni and friends of the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources.

Pigs increasingly have become the animal model of choice for studying human health and disease, and a new center at MU soon will serve as the world’s clearinghouse for swine genetics.

The National Center for Research Resources, a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), recently awarded MU a $2.848 million grant to establish the National Swine Research and Resource Center.

The grant, which will be matched by campus, will be used to construct a 20,000-square-foot facility from which swine models will be created, stored and distributed to biomedical researchers around the globe. The NIH also awarded the center a five-year, $7.1 million operational budget.

While mouse and rat research models have helped scientists make many advances in the understanding of human disease, swine models offer new opportunities for study, said Randall Prather, an MU animal scientist helping to establish the new center.

“Because of similarities in their body size and physiology, pigs are an ideal animal model for humans,” he said. “In comparison to mice, their size aids with blood and tissue collection, as well as testing new medical procedures.”

Lela Riley, a professor in the veterinary pathobiology department also involved with the swine center, said that in comparison to mice and rats, there are many fewer swine models currently available to researchers.

“Our primary goal is to put these models in the hands of the researchers who need them,” she said. “Eighty percent of the funding for the new center will be dedicated to collecting and maintaining the resource repository, which will include eggs, sperm, embryos, somatic cells and ovarian tissue.”

Riley said each swine strain will be tested before it is included in the repository. Once tested, the strains will be made available to the research community.

“We’ll use both traditional and assisted-reproduction techniques, including in-vitro fertilization and cloning, to produce the research models,” Prather said. “For those models most in demand, we’ll keep animals on the hoof to expedite requests.”

The remaining 20 percent of the center’s funding will go toward research.

Creating new genetic models, and improving cryopreservation techniques and pathogen detection will be among the center’s priorities.

“One of the challenges will be finding better methods of preserving swine sperm, which doesn’t freeze well,” Riley said. “Ensuring the animals don’t have compromised health status that may affect research will be another key research component.”

Prather said new genetic models created would include both models where genes are added and models where genes are removed or “knocked out.”

Although the center primarily will serve biomedical research applications, he said many of the same genetic technologies could be used to enhance agricultural livestock production in the future.

“Just as we can genetically modify pigs to study disease, we can also modify them to help farmers produce higher quality hogs at less cost,” Prather said. “Through modification, we can make healthier pigs that resist diseases, more efficient pigs that produce more muscle with less feed, and pigs that are more reproductively efficient and environmentally friendly. The possibilities are only limited by the imagination.”

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Last Update: March 12, 2007