China's western Shaanxi Province is known for rugged windswept terrain and its coal and wool, but not necessarily its science. Yet at the Shaanxi Provincial Engineering and Technology Research Center for Shaanbei Cashmere Goats, scientists have just created a new kind of goat, with bigger muscles and longer hair than normal. The goats were made not by breeding but by directly manipulating animal DNA—a sign of how rapidly China has embraced a global gene-changing revolution.
Geneticist Lei Qu wants to increase goatherd incomes by boosting how much meat and wool each animal produces. For years research projects at his lab in Yulin, a former garrison town along the Great Wall, stumbled along, Qu's colleagues say. "The results were not so obvious, although we had worked so many years," his research assistant, Haijing Zhu, wrote in an e-mail.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 26 2015, @02:21AM
We should skip the "genetic revolution" all together and be decades ahead in growing tissue from scratch. We already do so for medical purposes. Imagine warehouses where delicious filet mignon is grown like sod. Acre sized slabs a foot thick fed from the top via nutrient spray and a waste water deposition system at the bottom.
Huge fields of cultured bacon! What kind of patriot would deny that American Manifest Destiny! That is clearly far superior to the communist solution of hairy, muscly goats.