Nature Newson 13 january, the US Department of agriculture (USDA) launched a service that allows dairy-cattle breeders to double their chances of selecting the best bulls to sire milk-producing cows.
which bull would be likely to sire calves that were good milk producers. The test costs about $225
when a bull is born, thus avoiding the $25, 000-50,000 cost of raising a bull for five years to see
if it sires good milk-producing offspring. The best bulls become elite breeders, says Van Tassell,
The others become hamburger. Previously, DNA tests allowed a typical breeder to select the best bull some 35%of the time,
Companies in New zealand and The netherlands have set up private services for cattle breeders; and, following the USDA's lead,
If villagers can get a few cows to care for if they have clean water and their children can go to school,
early-stage human-cow, human-mouse and human-rabbit hybrid embryos fail to grow beyond 16 cells (Y. Chung et al.
when it was used to create Dolly the cloned sheep in 1996. This time, the researchers replaced the nuclei of human,
cow, mouse and rabbit eggs with nuclei from human non-sex, or somatic cells. Human-human embryos developed normally
UK, who is developing mouse-pig hybrid embryos. The paper outlines only one set of conditions used to create the embryos,
Advanced Cell Technology previously cloned an endangered bull of the gaur species, using eggs from the common cow to create hybrid gaur-cow embryos.
However, these two species are related closely. It may be possible to create hybrid embryos using human somatic cells and eggs from nonhuman primates,
The work in question was done in 1947 by the Dutch researcher Niko Tinbergen on the begging behaviour of herring-gull chicks.
presented wild chicks with model birds bearing spots and measured how much they pecked at the model.
The story that made it into the textbooks is that chicks have a powerful innate tendency to peck at red dots,
however, shows that Tinbergen found that chicks actually pecked more at a black dot than a red one.
The chicks, he decided, became habituated to the red spot and stopped pecking at it.
reduced the chicks'apparent preference for colours other than red. He was initially explicit about this,
Tinbergen did other experiments with gull chicks showing for example, that they will peck even at a disembodied red spot on a stick
The study suggests the Botai culture was a distinct centre of domestication, separate from the'Fertile Crescent'area, between the Mediterranean sea and the Gulf, where cattle,
sheep and goats were domesticated first, says Outram. The findings are unusual he says, because animal domestication typically occurs in cultures that have adopted agriculture,
Argentinian authorities report that a pig at a pig farm in Buenos aires province has tested positive for the novel H1n1 strain,
making it only the second known swine infection outside of Canada. 22 june 2009: Chinese state news source Xinhua reports tests have begun on the first H1n1 vaccine developed in the country.
Canadian authorities announce that H1n1 has been detected in a swine herd in Alberta. The pigs likely caught the virus from a Canadian who had visited recently Mexico,
making this the first known case of human-to-animal transmission. 1 may 2009: As of this morning, 331 cases of H1n1 have been reported in 11 countries.
Nature Newsa white-faced, red-coated Hereford cow named Dominette has become the first cow to have sequenced its genome.
Information from the 5-year, US$53-million cow-genome project is being used to trace the genetic legacy of bovine domestication after centuries of careful breeding.
Cattle breeders are eagerly incorporating the information into their breeding programmes (see No bull: genes for better milk.
Cows (Bos taurus) were domesticated first up to 10,000 years ago. Now, the world's agricultural herds are teeming with 1. 2 billion cattle,
says Patrick Cunningham, an animal geneticist at Trinity college Dublin in Ireland and chief scientific adviser to The irish government.
and by 2007, dairy herds in the United states were producing 34%more milk from about half as many cows as they were in 1960.
Economically, cattle are the most important partner species of animal we have, Cunningham says. But the bovine genome is large at 3 billion bases,
We have very little knowledge of the genes that are involved in cattle breeding says James Womack, a genome researcher at Texas A&m University in College Station,
These genetic markers were used then to characterize the genetic diversity found in nearly 500 cattle from 19 breeds.
and intensively bred for specific traits the modern cattle population is about as diverse as humans,
and a member of the bovine sequencing team. This could be because the cattle populations that formed the basis for those first farmed herds were very diverse.
But Harris Lewin, a genome biologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who also assisted with the analysis of the genome
Cattle may occasionally mated with aurochs large, wild cows that lived in Europe until their extinction in the seventeenth century providing periodic infusions of new genes,
he says. Despite this diversity, years of breeding cattle for meat and milk have weakened the herds,
says Cunningham, which is evident in recent declines in longevity and fertility. Genetic markers will help breeders to improve the health of their herds as well as the quality
without having to wait for calves to reach adulthood. Improved genetic techniques could push up agricultural yields by as much as 50%or 12 gallons of milk per cow each year,
estimates Van tassel. The new sequence also shows that the human genome is more similar to the genome of cattle than to mice suggesting that, for some diseases,
cows could be a better model for research, says Lewin. In the past, work on cattle led to the development of the smallpox vaccine and in vitro fertilization techniques.
Geneticist Michel Georges of the University of Li  ge in Belgium worries that the focus on improving agricultural herds could cause researchers to stop investigating the biology underlying those improvements.
There is more to be done with these domestic animal resources rather than just developing these genomic selection methods,
Patchy pig monitoring may hide flu threat: Nature Newspublic-health experts are warning that a lack of surveillance may be allowing the 2009 pandemic H1n1 flu virus to go undetected in pigs.
This raises the risk that the virus could circulate freely between humans and pigs, making it more likely to reassort into a deadlier strain,
they say. Pig surveillance is largely the remit of animal health organizations, agriculture ministries and the farming industry.
Their main concern tends to be that any reports of the pandemic virus in pigs might provoke overreactions such as the mass culling of pigs that took place in Egypt
or trade bans on pigs and pork. Within minutes of the World health organization (WHO) announcement on 11 june that swine flu had become a pandemic, Bernard Vallat, director-general of an intergovernmental trade body,
the World organisation for Animal health (OIE), had reiterated that trade sanctions were unjustified. So far the role of animals has not been demonstrated in the virus's epidemiology or spread,
But some experts say that is an artefact of patchy to nonexistent flu surveillance in pigs.
and his colleagues concluded that the lack of systematic swine surveillance allowed for the undetected persistence and evolution of this potentially pandemic strain for many years.
and pigs are an obvious part of the epidemiology of the new virus, says Smith. Yet the number of swine-flu sequences in the international Genbank database is about a tenth of that for avian flu viruses.
Circulation of the virus between pigs and humans is definitely a possibility he adds. The pandemic virus has so far been found in pigs from just one farm, in Alberta, Canada,
where it spread throughout the herd. But noone has been able to pin down how the herd became infected.
Scientists at the Veterinary Laboratories Agency in Weybridge, UK, have shown that pigs can easily become infected with the virus,
Past pandemic viruses have gone also on to become endemic in pig populations. It's absolutely surprising that a virus this contagious in both humans and swine
and which has been reported in humans in 76 countries, has only been reported in one swine farm in Canada,
says Jimmy Smith, head of livestock affairs at the World bank in WASHINGTON DC, and a member of the organization's flu task force.
It is highly likely that more pigs are infected in more places. Absence of evidence of the pandemic virus in pig populations is not evidence of absence,
concedes Steve Edwards, chairman of the OIE-FAO Network of Expertise on Animal Influenza (OFFLU),
which coordinates work done by animal-flu surveillance labs worldwide, and former chief executive of the Veterinary Laboratories Agency.
Whereas flu surveillance has improved over the past six years in poultry and wild birds, pigs have been below the radar,
says Ilaria Capua, an animal-flu expert at the Experimental Animal health Care Institute of Venice in Legnaro, Italy.
The avian H5n1 flu virus leads to serious disease in poultry and causes huge economic losses,
In pigs flu viruses, although common, tend to cause only mild disease, so there is no obligation to report cases of swine flu,
however its member states to voluntarily report any occurrences of the 2009 pandemic virus in pigs.
Most flu surveillance in pigs is passive, relying on farmers or vets sending material to government labs. Active targeted surveillance with diagnostic tests is rarer,
and THE WHO on 21 may the conclusions of which were made public last week recommended scaling up flu surveillance efforts in pigs,
European union funding for one of the world's largest pig surveillance networks expired in March. The European Surveillance Network for Influenza in Pigs,
which was created in 2001, comprises nine European labs and one in Hong kong. Although the network has detected not yet the new virus in pigs, its coordinator Kristien Van Reeth,
an animal virologist at Ghent University in Belgium, admits that participating labs have taken just a few hundred to a thousand samples each over the past year.
Network members hope that with the pandemic highlighting the need for better pig surveillance new funding will be forthcoming.
-and public-health communities underestimated the potential for pigs to generate a pandemic virus . Although pigs can be infected with many subtypes of flu,
the three most common endemic strains are H1n1, H1n2 and H3n2. Most expected that any new pandemic would involve the introduction of a viral subtype not previously seen in humans,
swine and human flu viruses would have swapped genes with avian viruses, ultimately giving rise to the dangerous assortment of genes carried by the 1918 virus. This work suggests that the generation of pandemic strains
Yi Guan of the University of Hong kong, Robert Webster of St jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee,
swine and human flu viruses and created family trees based on DNA sequence information. By estimating the amount of time it would take to accumulate the differences in DNA sequences found in human and swine viruses,
the researchers determined that a precursor to at least one 1918 flu gene was present in mammals before 1911.
Instead, the new findings suggest that an avian strain entered pig and human populations, and then swapped genes with mammalian flu viruses before becoming a pandemic.
and swine forms of H1n1 shared a common ancestor years before 1918. But he remains unconvinced by the series of genetic swaps proposed by the paper.
A new study released today By nature suggests that people alive during the infamous 1918 influenza outbreak have the greatest protection against the current swine flu1.
including mice, miniature pigs, ferrets and macaques. In all but the pig, the virus yields an infection in the lungs that is more severe than would be expected from an average seasonal flu, according to Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his colleagues,
who conducted the study. Kawaoka's team also confirmed that some commercially available antiviral drugs,
but pigs showed no outward signs of disease even though the virus reproduced capably in the swine respiratory system.
This, the authors suggest, could explain why farmers have not reported an outbreak of sick pigs.
The animal studies used higher doses of virus than humans would normally encounter a practice that is common for such experiments.
, many landowners try to boost their income by clearing a hectare or two each year for farms or cattle grazing.
and on world prices for livestock products and major grain, don't take into account gains in crop yields
According to Seralini, eating Bt brinjal reduced appetite in goats, increased prothrombin time (the time it takes blood to clot) in goats and rabbits,
ranging from soil practices such as tillage to sustainable livestock programmes to regulate the amount of cattle in a region.
and livestock activities constituted more than half of the country's exports, for a total of US$39 billion.
Dirty pigs are healthy pigs: Nature Newsliving like a pig could be good for you. Research has shown how dirty piglets obtain'friendly'bacteria that help them to develop healthy immune systems later in life.
The results, published online in BMC Biology1, provide the first direct link between dirty living, immune health and genetic expression.
They also indicate that manipulating gut bacteria early in life might reduce allergies and other autoimmune diseases, says Denise Kelly, a gut immunologist at the University of Aberdeen, UK and one of the study's authors.
Researchers began with 54 piglets and divided them equally between an outdoor environment, an indoor environment,
and an isolated environment where they were fed antibiotics on a daily basis. The scientists then killed piglets on days 5 (neonatal stage), 28 (weaning age),
The study found that 90%of bacteria in the guts of the outdoor piglets came from the phylum Firmicutes.
In contrast, the Firmicutes bacteria made up less than 70%and just more than 50%of the gut flora in indoor and isolated bred pigs respectively.
The pigs also had much smaller proportions of bacteria from the lactobacillaceae family. The team also found that the differences in gut microbial communities affected the expression of genes associated with the piglets'immune system.
Animals raised in the isolated environment expressed more genes involved in inflammatory immune responses and cholesterol synthesis,
whereas genes associated with T cells were expressed in the outdoor-reared pigs. Kelly says that until now,
because the study was carried out in pigs, there is no way to be certain that the results are relevant to humans.
and pig guts and their comparable size in organs, makes pigs a good model animal to study.
looked at the effects of reducing livestock production by 30%.%Such a change in the UK would save 2, 850 DALYS from heart disease;
less livestock could lead to poor nutrition in low-income countries, and better housing insulation could lead to health risks from factors such as more indoor air pollution.
He's pigs; I'm dogs, said the Seoul National University cloning specialist with a smile,
Alan Colman, who worked on the team that cloned Dolly the sheep, is impressed similarly with the team's productivity, but also sceptical:
Both laboratories are working on transgenic pigs that can produce tissues for transplant into humans. What we are doing is really
which owns the patents covering the techniques used to clone Dolly the sheep, gives it exclusive rights to clone dogs as well as cats and endangered species. At Bioarts'urging,
The team reports its findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 1 Lions normally dine on grazing animals such as zebra and wildebeest
Browsing animals, such as giraffes and antelopes, have different ratios of carbon isotopes to grazers because their food shrubs and trees versus grasses carries out different types of photosynthesis. The team characterized the humans'isotope ratios by taking advantage of a fluke of history,
Cattle disease faces total wipeout: Nature Newswhat does it take to wipe a scourge off the face of the Earth?
whether the problem is in people or cattle. World health bodies say that within 18 months they will celebrate the eradication of rinderpest, the world's most devastating cattle disease.
It would become only the second disease that humans have wiped from the globe after smallpox,
and since then it has killed millions of cattle and other wildlife throughout Europe, Africa, the Middle east and the Indian subcontinent.
which can kill 80-90%of infected cattle within ten days, is caused by a morbillivirus a group of viruses that also includes measles.
regional efforts and focused on widespread vaccination programmes and on long-term monitoring of cattle and wildlife.
as both will test positive for antibodies against the virus. Cows also pass on antibodies to their offspring through their milk.
and calves younger than two years old then need to be tested. It is a difficult,
Nature Newsrinderpest, the world's most devastating cattle disease, will be declared eradicated within 18 months, according to world health bodies.
It not only kills cattle and other wildlife, it also causes famines when people in developing countries lose the beasts they need to plough their fields,
Rinderpest, otherwise known as cattle plague, has killed many millions of cattle and other wildlife around the world since it first spread from Asia to Europe in the herds of the invading tribes, causing outbreaks during the Roman empire in 376-386.
diarrhoea and dehydration and the disease kills 80-90%of infected cattle in just 7-10 days.
The programme's success depended on widespread vaccination programmes and long-term monitoring of cattle and wildlife.
as both will test positive for antibodies against the virus. Cows also pass on antibodies to their offspring through their milk.
vaccinations must stop for a period of two years and calves less than two years old tested.
Dirty pigs beat disease: Nature Newsliving like a pig could be good for you, according to research showing that dirty piglets pick up'friendly'bacteria that help them to develop robust immune systems later in life.
The results provide support for the hygiene hypothesis, which suggests that a lack of exposure to microbes in early life can affect development of the immune system and increase susceptibility to certain disorders, such as allergies and inflammatory bowel disease.
Denise Kelly, a gut immunologist at the University of Aberdeen, UK, who worked on the study,
The researchers took 54 piglets and divided them equally between an outdoor environment, an indoor environment and isolated conditions in which they were fed antibiotics daily.
The scientists then killed piglets on day 5 (neonatal stage), day 28 (weaning age) and day 56 (nearing maturity) to study their gut tissue and faeces.
The study found that 90%of bacteria in the guts of the outdoor piglets came from the phylum Firmicutes.
Firmicutes made up less than 70%of the gut flora in indoor pigs and slightly more than 50%of that in isolated pigs.
Pigs from these cleaner environments also had much smaller proportions of bacteria from the Lactobacillaceae.
Kelly's team also found that the differences in gut microbes affected the expression of genes associated with the piglets'immune systems.
whereas genes linked with infection-fighting T cells were expressed in the outdoor-bred pigs. Glenn Gibson, a food microbiologist at the University of Reading, UK, says that previous studies have suggested that immune responses are linked to organisms in the gut.
because the study was carried out in pigs, there is no way to be certain that the results are relevant to humans.
as did the cleaner piglets. But, he adds, patients with Crohn's also have reduced overall bacterial diversity,
similar to the outdoor pigs, suggesting that the results might not extrapolate directly to human disease.
however, that the comparable organ sizes of humans and pigs, and the similarities between the microorganisms found in their guts,
makes pigs good model animals for such studies.
Altered microbe makes biofuel: Nature Newsin a bid to overcome the drawbacks of existing biofuels,
such as the golden takin, he notes. The idea of inbreeding in Qinling is also at odds with the most recent genetic analyses,
Livestock seems to be the largest contributor to the run off pollution and is responsible for 96%,38%and 56%of COD, nitrogen and phosphorus discharges,
and pigs to locate them there's folklore behind it. And while most other mushrooms can be cultivated
The truffle's smell lures female pigs which, mistaking the aroma for an irresistibly scented boar,
New zealand's GM cattle under fire: Nature Newsscientists in New zealand whose work with genetically modified (GM) animals had been threatened by A high Court ruling have been given a reprieve.
and develop up to 18 different species of GM livestock in a contained outdoor facility, without specifying which genes may be modified,
Agresearch currently holds two approvals to develop and test GM cattle in containment. The first was obtained 11 years ago.
which new approvals are required to enable further development and breeding of the cattle. Agresearch had hoped to transfer their herd of 100 GM cows to the 4 new linked applications,
but the legal action and subsequent delays forced them to make more specific interim applications. The original approvals were amended on 11 march to allow existing GM cattle to escape a threatened cull.
A further application that will enable Agresearch to resume breeding the cows is under consideration, with a decision expected from ERMA in Mid-april.
Despite the recent Court of Appeal ruling in Agresearch's favour, Barry Scott, head of the Institute of Molecular Biosciences at Massey University in Palmerston North, New zealand,
Researchers were alerted first to the chickens by an employee in the poultry industry who spotted the unusual birds while visiting farms.
The'cockerel'side of these birds has white feathers, large wattles and breast muscles, whereas the smaller'hen'side has characteristic dark colouring.
whereas the cockerel side contained mostly normal male cells with male chromosomes. Because both sides were exposed to exactly the same hormones
Nature Newsthe chief veterinary officer of The netherlands has defended the country's decision to cull thousands of goats in an effort to control an unprecedented outbreak of Q fever.
however, epidemiological studies pinpointed goats as the source of the disease in an area increasingly densely populated by humans and dairy farms over the past decade,
It can trigger abortions in goats and sheep and causes flu-like symptoms and sometimes pneumonia in humans.
After more than 2, 200 confirmed human cases of the disease last year, the Dutch government slaughtered over 50,000 dairy goats on 55 of the country's nearly 400 farms in an effort to prevent the disease from spreading further.
Vaccination of dairy goats is now mandatory everywhere in the country. After the first round of vaccinations in the southern Netherlands in 2008, initial findings showed that the vaccine,
But the first infected goats to be vaccinated were slaughtered in 2009. That put a crimp in possible findings from this year's lambing season
project leader on Q fever in goats for the Central Veterinary Institute (CVI) in Wageningen, The netherlands.
CVI researchers will attempt to analyze data from the dead goats, he says, but in the end, documenting the impact of the vaccinations may have to wait at least another year.
where testing will begin this summer on sheep and goats on both dairy and meat farms,
says Andrew Kotze from the livestock industries division of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in St lucia, Queensland.
and reductions in poverty. go. nature. com/jr2rlc Number crunch 4%The proportion of global anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions emitted by dairy cows,
We're making silk purses from sows'ears, says Gregg Marland, a scientist with the Energy department's Carbon dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) in Oak ridge, Tennessee.
The former produced on average two fledging chicks per nest in 2009. In contrast, birds at the control sites achieved an average of three fledging chicks.
Pounlin says she hopes that the results will stop a proposed expansion of Bti spraying in the Camargue,
such as chickens and pigs, for antibodies that signal the presence of pathogens. Both methods put people at risk of exposure to the viruses.
Dominant breeders rely on helpers to feed chicks, but they also tolerate individuals that don't seem to help at all.
The research team used camouflaged video cameras to collect data on how often 61 wild crows from 17 social groups in northern Spain fed chicks.
When clipped crows reduced their chick feeding by about 30, %only non-breeders intensified their care-giving efforts.
Five out of eight crows that had refused previously to visit the nest suddenly began feeding the chicks.
because they hear chicks begging or because dominant birds force them to contribute. Dawdling animals may be more likely to chip in voluntarily
In the Amazon, deforestation is linked often to the expansion of soy farming and cattle ranching.
Then she campaigned to get mountain villagers to switch from grazing goats to sheep, as she saw that the goats were destroying the pine forests.
In the beginning, the villagers wanted to kill us, says¡ambel, who had studied the origin of village farming in Turkey2.
The goats would make a ruckus at night, but sheep are quiet. We sleep in peace now,
she recalled the villagers saying.¡met less resistance when she encouraged village weavers to switch from artificial to natural dyes in the production of their woollen carpets and kilims,
Today, traditional weaving industries are widespread in Turkey. It is one of the many benefits¡
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