By R. Brownell
Forget about Chihuahuas, there’s a new small pet in town! Meet the micro pig, a new bread created in a Chinese biotech firm which weighs in at a total of 33 pounds. According to the Los Angeles Times:
BGI, a company based in the southern city of Shenzhen that is known for its work sequencing human, plant and animal DNA, recently announced that it intends to start selling $1,600 miniature pigs that it initially created as laboratory models for studying human ailments.
The pigs created a splash late last month when BGI showed them at the Shenzhen International Biotech Leaders Summit. The pint-size porkers were created through a process known as gene editing. Rather than introduce another organism’s DNA into the pigs, scientists “edit” the swine’s own genetic material, disabling a copy of the growth hormone receptor gene so that cells don’t get a signal to grow.
Researchers throughout the world are jumping for joy as the creation of micro pigs could be a real blessing for scientists, cutting the total cost of raising them as laboratory animals and making caring for them much easier in the process. Willard Eyestone, associate professor of biotechnology at Virginia Tech recently stated that “their utility for research will depend on whether they are otherwise normal like a regular pig and unaffected by the edited gene other than their diminutive size.” The Chinese company attached to the lab plans on releasing the pigs for sale on the open market as soon as possible.
