Animal biotech

Question 1

Drug discovery entails animal and human experimentation - how is this coped with ethically?

Answer 1

Any experimentation needs to be approved before you even start the experiment. Ensure that people and animal rights are not trampled.

Declaration of helsinki
Ethical principle followed by medical personnel revolving around medical research on humans.

Question 2

What are examples of experiments that should have never happened?

Answer 2

LSD given to an elephant did not take into consideration its SA:V and ended up OD the elephant.
CHildren were given oats laced with platonium with out being told.
AZT testing in New york and Zimbabwe.

Question 3

Some drugs are often discovered by accident give an example of such drug.

Answer 3

sildenalfil

Question 4

What is target identification?

Answer 4

Drugs that react with certain cellular or genetic chemical molecules are known as targets, which can be associated with a specific illness.
Targets are therefore identified and its association with the illness can be determined.

Question 5

What is target validation?

Answer 5

Targets are compared to other possible candidates in terms of their association with a specific illness
Tests are done to ensure that the interactions between the target and drug leads. to the appropriate change in “sick cells”

Question 6

What is lead generation?

Answer 6

A lead molecule has the potential to treat the illness
Comparasins with other known molecules to determine its potential.

Question 7

What is lead optimization?

Answer 7

compare the different lead molecules and choose the one with the greatest potential to be developed as an effective drug.
Include in vivo and in vitro studies

Safety test regarding promising molecules:
Absorption
Distribution
Metabolism
Excretion
Toxicity

Question 8

When can you start the pre-clinical trial?

Answer 8

only after TV,LG and LO has been completed

Question 9

Are animals good models for humans?

Answer 9

CHocolate is toxic to dogs
Paracetamol is toxic to cats

very often not good models
need to figure out which animals are good models.

Question 10

What are the alternatives if we cannot use animal models?

Answer 10

Structural predictions
Cell cultures
Mini-organs on a chip - multiple lines stimulated to what those cells would experience.

Question 11

What are clinical trials?

Answer 11

the study of the drug developemnt and ensuring its safety in humans.
Permission needs to be granted from certain organisations prior
Ethical clearance and protection of participant rights
4 phases.

Question 12

What happens in phase 1?

Answer 12

test the safety, side effects, dosage, how to administer the drug in a small group of healthy people.

Question 13

Why are most climical trials done by double blind randomised testing?

Answer 13

the patient and doctor is uninformed if they get/administer the placebo or the drug being tested. so that they cannot fake symptoms if given the placebo.

Question 14

Phase 4 is FDA approval

Answer 14

drug can be pulled off of the market even after it has been released.
Constantly monitoring the long term effects of the drugs.

Question 14

How long does it take to make a drug and release it on the world market?

Answer 14

can take up to 15 years!!

Question 15

What is the difference between a drug and a vaccine?

Answer 15

drug is treatment that can help cure a disease once being infected

vaccine prevent the initial infection

Question 16

How was the coronavirus expidited?

Answer 16

the treatment was safe for humans took only 10 months to make (record)
Dexamethasone - anti-inflammatory used to treat patients ventilators
Blood plasma - taken from corona recoverers
Hydroxychloroquinine - effective evidence

Question 17

How was the corona vaccine approached?

Answer 17

Engineered viruses
mRNA
Inactivated virus
DNA plasmid with coronavirus genes
Isolated recombinant protein

Question 18

What is gene therapy?

Answer 18

the treatment of genetic diseases by transferring a healthy gene to replace the affected one.
Treats a form of leukaemia
Cures a rare form of blindness
Has high costs.

Question 19

examples of Gene therapys?

Answer 19

DMD in boys which also affects golden retrievers.
A mini-dystrophin gene was put into the genome of the virus and injected into the muscle, lead to protein production and dogs had normal muscle development or 2 years.

Question 20

What are stem cells?

Answer 20

Growing new organs for transplantation
advantage - organ rejection doesn’t occur if grown from own stem cells
problem - no system to regenerate a whole new organisms

Question 21

What does multipotent mean?

Answer 21

a pluripotent cell can form any kind of organ in an organism

Question 22

What does unipotent mean?

Answer 22

can from only one kind of cell in an organ

Question 23

What does totipotent mean?

Answer 23

The ability of a single cell to differentiate into a different organ or tissue
only found in early embryo in plants

Question 24

What does pluripotent mean?

Answer 24

The ability of a cell to differentiate into any cell type of an adult
Found in blastocyst and bone marrow

Question 25

What are induced pluripotent stem cells?

Answer 25

Methods to convert somatic stem cells into pluripotent ones, without the problem of ethical issues.

Question 26

How can we clone a full sized heart in a lab?

Answer 26

stem cells are grown on a decellularized heart matrix for a few weeks. When given an electric shock the heart started beating.

Question 27

Is lab meat a more efficient way of making food?

Answer 27

farm animals need a lot of land to be cultivated
but lab meat is expensive.

Question 28

why do we clone animals?

Answer 28

Rich person
Improve animal herds favouring an advantageous trait
Conservation to increase animal numbers

Question 29

What animals have been clones already?

Answer 29

SHeep, cattle, monkies via embryo twinning
Sheep, deer, mouse, cattle via somatic nuclear cell transfer.

Question 30

What is embryo twinning?

Answer 30

Division of embryos in half or dividing the blastomere where cells are physically separated during early embryonic stages.
Easy procedure with limited applications
Results in identical twins - with genetic material of 2 parents.

Question 31

What is somatic nuclear cell cloning?

Answer 31

How dolly the sheep was cloned.
Somatic cell from donor sheep was implanted into egg after the egg’s nuclear was sucked out via a pipette. the embryo is transferred to a surrogate mother for the gestation period.

Question 32

What are the limitations or setbacks of cloning?

Answer 32

Donor cell must come from a living organisms
Clones are not exactly identical - shaped by their experiences and the environment
Low success rate
Reduced life expectancy

Question 33

What are transgenic animals?

Answer 33

GMO with DNA from another source inserted into their genome
GM Salmon with increase growth hormone is in Canada

Question 34

Goals of transgenic animals?

Answer 34

Research into animal and humans disease
Improve livestock animals
Use of animals as bioreactors

Question 35

Transformation in aniamls

Answer 35

Retrovirus-mediated transgenics
Pronuclear microinjection
Sperm-mediated transfer
Biolistics - genge guns

Question 36

What is pronuclear microinjection?

Answer 36

introduces the transgene DNA at the earliest possible stage of development of the zygote
DNA is directly injected into the nucleas of egg or sperm.
Entire body is transgenic.

Question 37

What is animal transformation?

Answer 37

Glofish
developed in Singapore to monitor water pollution
black and silver fish turned green are red by inserting various versions of GFP gene
On sale in the US except in California
Green florescent protein gene from jellyfish and sea anemone which is isolated and micro-injected into zebra-fish.

enviropig
express phytase in their salivary glands
Phytic acid in the pig meal is degraded releasing phosphorus
Phosphorus is released by the pig
normally passes through and is excreted.

Question 38

Mouse “knock out” technology

Answer 38

allows for the loss of a specific gene in mice
Allows for the function of the KO’d gene to be deduced from the defects seen in mice
can be used to mimic some diseases
trasngene is targeted to a specific site in the DNA of a mouse.
need embryonic cells

Question 39

Super bulls and mighty mice

Answer 39

Natural myostatin mutations

Question 40

Animal bioreactors

Answer 40

Can produce protiens
gene for desired protein is introduced via transgenics to the target cell
by using cloning techniques cells is raised to become and adult animal
produce milk or eggs that are rich in the desired protein

Pharm-goat
produces antithrombin protein which stops blood clotting

spider-goat
silk gene from orb spiders into goats
Male goats used to sire silk-producing female goats
the silk can be extracted, dried into a white powder and spun into fibres
fibers are stronger and more flexible than steel.

Question 41

What are the drawbacks of transgenics in animals?

Answer 41

Inserted DNA randomly integrates into the genome
Eggs must be harvested and fertilized in vitro and is labour intensive
more than one copy may get into the genome - will never be able to release that organism.

Question 42

What is the difference between cloning and transformation?

Answer 42

cloning is making a replica of an organism
transformation is inserting a brand new gene into an organisms genome.