Animal Biotechnology

Animal Biotechnology & its Applications

Animal Biotechnology is the branch of Biotechnology that deals with genetical modification of animals to improve their quality and productivity. It also deals with the production of therapeutic valuable compounds in animals. The Applications of Animal Biotechnology are in the field of Agriculture, Pharmaceutical and Dairy Industries. The animals are genetically modified at cellular and molecular level using recombinant DNA Technology.

Animal Cell culture –

In Animal Biotechnology, the cells isolated from animals are grown in artificial and favourable laboratory conditions (in-vitro). They can be grown as cells or tissues. To obtained the cell culture from animals, the cells are isolated by enzymatic or mechanical method. Different cells like kidney, skin, skeletal, breast, liver etc are grown in laboratory conditions.

Cell Cloning in Animal Biotechnology-

Cell cloning is a process of production of population from cell isolated from sample animal. As these cells multiply mitotically, they all are replicas of each other. The cells can be grown for limited period of time or for indefinite time. The normal cells that divide for limited number of times are called as finite cell lines. However, the cells that divide indefinitely are called as infinite cell lines or continuous cell lines. Such immortality is caused by chemical or virus. The cells that loses senescence and achieve transformation are called as Transformed cells. Growing and culturing continuous is much easier than culturing finite cell lines. Thus, the transformed cells have higher cloning efficiency compared to normal cells (finite).

The Cloning could be achieved by following approaches –

Monolayer Culture-

In this technique, the animal cells are grown in petri dish, flask or multi-well plates on semi solid media. It is an anchorage dependent or adherent culture. To grow, these cells need a substrate for the attachment. During the growth, the animal cells remain adhered to substrate. The substrate plays an vital role in cell communication. They are grown in single layer of cells and hence it is easy to pick them from the attached surface.

Suspension Culture –

In this technique, the animal cells are grown in liquid or viscous media. The animal cells grown in suspension media are adherence or anchorage independent.

Types of Culture –

A. Primary cell culture

The primary cell culture is obtained from the host directly. Hence, such culture contain heterogeneous cells. These cells have limited life span.

B. Secondary culture –

The secondary culture is obtained from primary culture. When the primary culture is sub-cultured in fresh media, it is called as secondary culture. The sub culturing of primary culture is called as passage. For this, the explant cells need to be processed enzymatically.

Applications of Animal Biotechnology –

  1. The Animal cell culture are widely used in the vaccine production. The vaccine like corona, rabbies, polio, chicken pox, hepatatis B and measles.

2. The cell culture are also used for culturing viruses.

3. The cell culture are used for carrying out biochemical, molecular and cellular research for understanding fundamentals of life.

4. It is also used to study the effect of toxic compounds on cellular growth.

5. The Animal Biotechnology is used to study the effect of carcinogenesis and transformation process.

6. The Cell culture is employed in genetic manipulation of animals cells.

7. The Animal culture techniques are also used to study the interactions of pathogenic agent and immune cells.

8. It is used for Monoclonal Antibody production.

References-

https://nifa.usda.gov/animal-biotechnology

https://www.aboutbioscience.org/topics/animal-biotechnology/

https://www.bio.org/sites/default/files/legacy/bioorg/docs/files/Animal_onepager.pdf

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