- Argentina - Portal público de noticias de la República Argentina.
Bio Sidus company has accomplished the production of a hormone for bovine growth from cloned and transgenic calves, which will increase the production of cow milk up to 20%. The country will thus be the world producer and exporter of this product.
Bio Sidus, the most important company of biotechnology in Latin America made an announcement of this new achievement that will revolutionize the agricultural-cattle sector. In its Pharmaceutical Dairy Farm – a Bio Sidus lab dedicated to animal genetics - a new bovine “dinasty” or “breed” was created: the Porteña, composed by cloned calves especially to get the hormone for bovine growth (bGH or according to its scientific name, Bovine Somatotropina).
Former dinasties generated by BIO Sidus –Pampa and Patagonia- were focused on the production of gro and insuline hormones for people. This Porteña dinasty, on the other hand, is not focused on the pharmaceutical market but the rural sector, where the hormone for bovine growth is used to increase the production of milk. Thus, this new product has got an exporting profile, since it is mainly used in the USA, Mexico and Brazil, among other countries.
The amount of milk that a diary farm animal can give changes according to its breed and quality and can be around 25 litres a day. Using bGH milk production can be increased up to 20%.
bGH is often used since it means an improvement of the productive levels for the diary farmer and other benefits. But the hormone productive system needs to be very efficient because it requires very high quantities of product per year (tons.). So, with this production is very expensive. To get this protein from transgenic cows, after bio Sidus’s discovery, production costs can be significantly reduced. This protein is an important product for the cattle market, especifically for the diary farm sector.
Porteñas`s dinasty required more than one million dollars investment and represents a new step forward in the development of this productive methodology and a guarantee of use, even though the methodology to generate transgenic animals has already been developed in many countries of the first world, bio Sidus is one of the four companies in the world that are producing re compound proteins in transgenic animals with commercial purposes and is the first one doing it for bGH.
This process involves stages of biochemical high complexity, such as genetic engineering, cell biology, embryology and advanced techniques in fertilization used for cattle. Are People involved in this project are around 30.
Porteña´s Dinasty: A new Argentine scientific- technological success
Porteña´s transgenic calves characteristic is a genetic encoded construction for the hormone for bovine growth. This genetic construction expresses the hormone inside the udders of the cows, where naturally it does not express itself, so that big quantities of milk are obtained through this hormone.
For this project the gene of the hormone for bovine growth was added to the bovine cells, so that this may be produced inside the udder and secreted to the milk of these animals.
A few days after Porteña was created they noticed that its cells had got the inserted gene. Its sequence is the right one, and besides, this gene is correctly placed in its new cell environment. Through testing this milk production of the hormone for bovine growth, the scientific cycle which let the use of bovines as a method to produce this protein, is finished.
Now comes the stage of productive development until the veterinary product can be sold. The bGH purifies itself from milk, so it can reach a compatible level with any veterinary product used by injection.
