Milk rich in vitamins, proteins and calcium plays an important role in a child's development. However, the whole process will be affected when the child is allergic to milk.
Food allergies are one of the major health problems affecting a significant number of American children and nearly two and three percent of American babies are affected by milk allergy.
Bringing new hopes to the children and their parents affected by milk allergy, a team of New Zealand researchers have genetically engineered a cow whose milk has very low level of allergy causing protein, beta-lactoglobulin (BLG). Daisy, the cow, gives perfect milk with low allergy properties.
"We were successful in greatly reducing the amount of beta-lactoglobulin (BLG), a milk whey protein which is not in human breast milk and which can cause allergic reactions," Dr. Stefan Wagner, one of the lead authors on the paper, said in a statement.
"People have long looked into reducing this enigmatic protein, or completely knocking it out, because there has been no definitive function able to be assigned to it. So, we developed this scientific model to investigate the effect of knocking BLG protein out on the composition and functional properties of milk, and to determine whether the absence of BLG produces cow's milk that is hypo-allergenic," he added.
The results have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
For the study, the AgResearch scientists created a mouse model engineered to produce the sheep form of BLG protein. Later, two microRNAs (short ribonucleic acid molecules) were used to reduce the expression of the sheep BLG protein in the mouse milk.
The same method was applied while producing Daisy, using the RNAs to reduce the expression of the BLG protein. The cow was later hormonally induced to lactate. The milk was found free of the BLG protein, and having a higher level of the casein proteins normally found in cow's milk.
The researchers are now planning to breed from Daisy to examine the milk composition that results from the natural lactation.
However, the new development has invited some criticisms also.
"This is a frightening development not a breakthrough. Researchers that stoop so low as to manipulate the Mauri of an animal causing suffering, then pretend that this is a significant breakthrough when we already have business using technology to remove LG, are inhumane," Claire Bleakley president of GE Free NZ told Voxy.co.nz.
