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Production of hornless dairy cattle from genome-edited cell lines

Nature Biotechnology volume 34, pages 479–481 (2016)Cite this article

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To the Editor:

Physical dehorning of dairy cattle is practiced to protect animals and their handlers. Genetic analyses have identified variants that are associated with hornlessness (referred to as 'polled') in cattle, a trait that is common in beef but rare in dairy breeds. We have introgressed a candidate POLLED allele into dairy cattle by genome editing and reproductive cloning, providing both evidence for genetic causation and a means to introduce POLLED into livestock with the potential to improve the welfare of millions of cattle annually.

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Figure 1: Phenotypic and genotypic confirmation of POLLED introgression in Spotigy and Buri.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Recombinetics, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA

    Daniel F Carlson, Cheryl A Lancto, Eui-Soo Kim, Mark Walton, Tad S Sonstegard & Scott C Fahrenkrug

  2. Program in Scientific Computation, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

    Bin Zang

  3. Department of Veterinary Pathobiology, College of Veterinary Medicine, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA

    David Oldeschulte & Christopher Seabury

Authors
  1. Daniel F Carlson
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  2. Cheryl A Lancto
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  3. Bin Zang
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  4. Eui-Soo Kim
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  5. Mark Walton
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  6. David Oldeschulte
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  7. Christopher Seabury
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  8. Tad S Sonstegard
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  9. Scott C Fahrenkrug
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Scott C Fahrenkrug.

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Competing interests

D.F.C., C.A.L., E.S.K., T.S.S. and S.C.F. are employees of Recombinetics; D.F.C., C.A.L., E.S.K., M.W., T.S.S. and S.C.F. are shareholders in Recombinetics.

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Editor's note: This article has been peer-reviewed.

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Carlson, D., Lancto, C., Zang, B. et al. Production of hornless dairy cattle from genome-edited cell lines. Nat Biotechnol 34, 479–481 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.3560

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