This should stir the GM pot....

[windwalkingwolf]

It will take money to develop the sterile birds. There will be patents, protections, and corporate interest if it even LOOKS like a successful proposition. These surrogates would not be available to just anybody, they would have to make money. Chances are good aforementioned corporate interests will also figure a way to 'own' the eggs they lay as well. In this way, 'Rare Breed X' will become Bayer (or whatever) X. At the end of their useful life, they'll be sold to Campbell's for soup, or used to feed lab animals. That's my thoughts, anyway.

[windwalkingwolf]

My poor brain keeps coming back to this. OK, so, they've already 'made' some potential surrogate hens. They've already begun compiling genetic material for possible future use (assuming no power failures :? ). But, they don't say if there's been any successful implantation of follicles into a GM sterile hen. It's bugging me. You'd think such a crucial step would merit a mention! Also, if you can implant another hen's germ cells where there aren't any, why could you not just basically slurp out the genetic material from existing follicles in an adult bird and squirt in the new stuff? This is done successfully with genetic material all the time, and it seems to me that it might have a better success rate. If a hen has had genes removed, or turned off, so that she can never lay eggs, are her hormone 'factories' also affected? Are the normal hormonal and chemical structures that allow follicles to mature into eggs, still in place? Will she be a perpetual chick with hundreds of another breed's unrealized offspring? What other things does the deleted gene do, or not do?
I had a bone in my teeth and I did a little more digging. The hen that will lay another bird's eggs must have the genetic material of the donor hens implanted while she is still an embryo. Near as I could find out, nobody has actually tried that yet. Success would depend, among other things, on the embryo being female in the first place, so that's gotta get worked out first or it won't be very cost effective to create sterile birds. If the gene deletion is done in a male embryo, he will still be fertile but some of his offspring will not be, so a male chick is next to absolutely useless to this purpose.There will be failures, where the genetic material simply doesn't take hold. This gene modification is 8.1 % successful, if I read it right, which in science-y terms, is actually VERY successful, but there are still 91.9 % of pullet chicks hatched with the potential to make their own eggs, and so are likely destroyed because they're useless to the research. I'm well aware this is par for the course, but I'm a chicken lover and I can't help cringing a little . Fiddling with embryos results in a larger than usual death rate. It just does, no matter what techniques are used (in this case, a window in the egg covered in parafilm), so there will be a higher than normal number of losses during incubation. Then there's the rooster problem, you still need one to fertilize the 'sterile' hen, or you need frozen sperm, or frozen germ cells from a rooster so that a rooster of one species can produce the sperm of another in much the same way the hen is laying eggs that are not hers biologically. Nothing I've read so far has said if there's also a sperm bank. Might want to get on that one, geniuses? Talk about putting the chicken before the egg.
It's intimated that this would be a valuable bank of genetic material should a breed all get wiped out by bird flu or something...not only to revive the breed, but also perhaps to study why that breed was susceptible to the bird flu (or whatever) in the first place, and perhaps better develop birds that are resistant to certain diseases. Sounds like a good idea on the surface, but in reality, most likely the answers to such questions will be useless to the backyard keeper. For example, let's say all the crested Polish chickens in the world are wiped out by a virulent new mutation of Marek's disease, but most other breeds have survivors. A bunch of eccentric wealthy investors step forth, and Polish chickens are revived using the genetic bank and gm hens, miraculously made available to the public in an effort to rebuild the breed, while scientists study why they were so susceptible in the first place. Let's say for argument's sake, that the cavernous nares of the Polish were found to be responsible for holding a reservoir of infected dander, leading to a higher than usual virus count (I really don't think that's likely, but bear with me). So, all the Polish in the world begin dying again, and the only way to keep them alive would be in an environment where they could remain hermetically sealed off from every bird in the world, forever. Only two choices in this situation--the first, and most practical one, would be to let sleeping dogs lie, to let the birds with cavernous nares die off again (no more Polish) or to breed them NOT to have cavernous nares, which would require modifications to the skull vault, in which case, to my mind, they are no longer Polish. The second is that these birds continue to be bred and housed in laboratories, but now they are the rarest of the rare, exorbitantly expensive "Holy Grail" chickens that only people with specialized housing can keep. Sounds a bit silly to me either way. That's one theoretically possible scenario out of who knows how many. The funding for such a venture could never, ever be raised by the average chicken keepers in the first place. Well, maybe if all the Polish chicken lovers in the world donated to a Kickstarter or something.
Sorry about the long rant-y post. I needed to write it out to put my brain to bed on the matter LOL If you got through all my nonsense, you might be interested in the actual science-y article.
http://dev.biologists.org/content/devel ... 7.full.pdf
I have to admit it made my eyes cross and smoke come out of my ears.
Really, the only practical use I can see this proposal EVER having, is if the world's production (meaties and layers) breeder barns are decimated. I can definitely imagine genetic reserves of the best parent birds of these "breeds" being squirelled away. The only people with enough money and interest, would be companies like Aviagen or Hendrix...and indeed, most "production bird" companies are investing heavily in genetic research. Blarrgh.

[Killerbunny]

I always wonder about the cull policy for various diseases like Avian Flu. Why are you culling the potentially resistant birds? duh?

[Maximus]

Peaked in. Omg. Jan your brain!!! Does it ever tell you to rest?

Ok, leaving before I ramble.

[Ontario Chick]

I feel somewhat brave continuing this after Jan's input, but here goes.
I realize world doesn't work in any kind of logical way, just lets suppose that the money spend on this sort of "mad scientist" embryo implantations version scaled to poultry, would be invested in Universities and colleges that still have Agricultural and biology departments, to allow them to keep their own flocks as they did in the past, with record keeping and knowledge supported research, with occasional release of breeding stock to dedicated breeders, who would then be financially supported to keep records for let's say 5 year period with reporting back to the research departments.
The positive result of this kind of support would be pretty much guarantied .
Yah I know dreaming in technicolor.

[windwalkingwolf]

QR_BBPOST I always wonder about the cull policy for various diseases like Avian Flu. Why are you culling the potentially resistant birds? duh?

Because, right now, it's more cost effective to wipe out whole populations to prevent a disease from spreading, than it is to attempt to breed resistant birds. With SOOO much $$ tied up in keeping production birds actually producing, Big Food (and that includes everyone from the little guy with an egg quota, to Maple Lodge, to broiler breeder barns) aren't interested in losing production for any amount of time. The factories have to keep spitting out eggs and chickens, and a couple months production loss for cull and quarantine are nothing compared to the time necessary and loss potential if a disease is allowed to run it's course, and studied in depth. It is more cost effective to try to figure out genes responsible for susceptibility/resistance, and indel. Once that's successful, there's a blanket solution that doesn't require years of sick chickens that don't lay eggs.

QR_BBPOST Peaked in. Omg. Jan your brain!!! Does it ever tell you to rest?

Ok, leaving before I ramble.

Yes. When it starts doing the tangled wire thing like in Martin's video on your happy women post, I write it out and then I can rest. Or, after 24 hours of no sleep and a double shift at work, whichever comes first LOL

QR_BBPOST I feel somewhat brave continuing this after Jan's input, but here goes.
I realize world doesn't work in any kind of logical way, just lets suppose that the money spend on this sort of "mad scientist" embryo implantations version scaled to poultry, would be invested in Universities and colleges that still have Agricultural and biology departments, to allow them to keep their own flocks as they did in the past, with record keeping and knowledge supported research, with occasional release of breeding stock to dedicated breeders, who would then be financially supported to keep records for let's say 5 year period with reporting back to the research departments.
The positive result of this kind of support would be pretty much quarantined.
Yah I know dreaming in technicolor.

Double Like!!! It's a shame that we can't just research stuff for research's own sake, but like everything else, it's mostly profit driven. In the research article, it was mentioned that some of the sterile chicks were culled and examined at 2 weeks old and again at 4 weeks old, and that sterile grow-outs still did not lay eggs at 29 weeks of age, but no other information was given. Thanks were given at the end to the "Chicken Keepers", so I'm assuming the lab had to outsource the actual raising of the pullets, and they did not cull any of those last group to examine for follicles. That's MY pipe dream, that those mutant hens are living out their long, unproductive lives, eating grass and bugs in somebodys' yard :D LOL