Scientists Attempting to Rejigger Cow Stomachs

Washington Post reports on a gene-editing experiment designed to reduce methane emissions
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 26, 2024 9:19 AM CDT
In the Future, Cows May Take a Pill to Help the Climate
Stock image of cows.   (Getty / Clara Bastian)

"It's completely out of the box," University of California at Davis professor Ermias Kebreab tells the Washington Post. "Nobody has done it before." The reference is to an attempt to change the stomachs of cows through gene editing to make them belch less methane, a greenhouse gas. The belching is why cows are blamed for 4% of global warming, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. "If they succeed, they could wipe out the world's largest human-made source of methane and help change the trajectory of planetary warming," write Shannon Osaka and Emily Wright. The story explores the $30 million experiment now underway between UC-Davis and the Innovative Genomics Institute—and personified in a 4-week-old Holstein calf named Sushi.

The calf has been fed oil distilled from red seaweed—which is known to decrease methane in cows but impractical to implement on a large scale. The goal is to figure out how the oil is changing Sushi's stomach and replicate the process through genetic engineering. In theory, this could be transferred into a probiotic pill that could be fed to all cows when they're young, thus transforming their microbiomes for life. The Post notes that the experiment has scientific star power behind it: The institute working with UC-Davis was co-founded by Jennifer Doudna, a Nobel winner who helped pioneer CRISPR gene editing. It's possible that if researchers pull off the feat in cows, it can be replicated in other methane-producing animals such as goats and sheep. (Read the full story.)

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