'Got Milk?' could soon mean 'Got Insulin?' after scientists genetically alter cow

(MY NORTHWEST) – The phrase ‘Got Milk?’ will have a whole new meaning if one professor and his team have their way. University of Illinois Professor Matt Wheeler and his team genetically altered a Jersey cow in Sao Paulo, Brazil to produce human insulin in its milk.

“The mammary gland of a cow is a bioreactor to make a specific protein that we wanted to increase the amount of,” Wheeler said. “And so there is a little bit insulin in milk already. But basically, what we did is, we developed a DNA fragment account, we call it a DNA fabric construct, that basically targets the production of human proinsulin into the mammary gland of a cow.”

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He said to speed up the process, the bovine underwent lactation induction. It’s when the body produces milk without being pregnant. “When you do induced lactation, you really don’t know the amount that she’s (the cow) going to produce. I mean, she produces some grams per liter, but we don’t know if that’s two grams per liter, or 10 grams per liter, because you really don’t get an accurate number when you do lactation,” Wheeler said. “I mean, typically, a Holstein cow average Holstein cow in the Midwest or California would produce somewhere around 80 liters of milk a day. So if she made a gram per liter, and I think I did the math in the article, I mean that one gram per liter would treat about 2,800 (diabetic) patients.”

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