39 Clone farm

 

Clone farm

克隆农场

Factory farming coul soon enter a new era of mass production. Companies in the US are developing the technology needed to "clone" chickens on a massive scale. Once a chicken with desirable traits has been bred or genetically engineered , tens of thousands of eggs,which will hatch into identical copies, could roll off the production lines every hour. billions of clones could be produced each year to supply chicken farms with birds that all grow at the same rate, have the same amount of meat and taste the same.

工厂化农业可以很快就进入了一个新的批量生产的时代。美国公司正在开发的技术以“克隆”鸡在一个巨大的规模。一旦一个鸡与理想性状繁殖或基因工程，成千上万的卵，孵出如出一辙，可以推出了生产线每小时。数十亿的克隆每年能生产供应养鸡场的家禽都以相同的速度增长，相同数量的肉类和品味相同。

This , at least, is the vision of the Us's National institute of Science and technology, which has given Origen Therapeutics of Burlingame, California, ,and Embrex of North $4.7 million to help fund research. The prospect has alarmed animal welfare guoups, who fear it could increase the suffering of farm birds.

这样，至少，是视觉的美国国家科学和技术，这给了国际加利福尼亚，俄利根的疗法，，和embrex北4700000美元帮助基金研究。展望警告了动物福利集团化，他们害怕会增加患农场的鸟。

That's unlikely to put off the poultry industry,however, which wants disease-resistant birds that grow faster on less food. "Producers would like the same meatquantity but to use reduced inputs to get there," says Mike Fitzgerald of Origen. To meet this demand, Origen aims to "create an animal that is effectively a clone", he say. Normal cloning doesn't work in birds because eggs can't be removed and implanted. Instead, the company is trying to bulk-grow embryonic stem cells taken from fertilized eggs as soon as they're haid. "The trick is to culture the cells without them starting to distinguish, so they remain pluripotent," says Fitzgerald.

这是不可能把家禽产业，然而，这让抗病飞禽增长速度，少的食物。”制作人希望同meatquantity但饲料要减少，说：”菲茨杰拉德麦克奥利。为满足这一需求，“俄利根的目标是创造一种动物，是一种有效的克隆”，他说。正常的克隆是不工作，因为在鸟蛋不能被删除和植入。相反，该公司正试图里大量繁殖胚胎干细胞从受精卵，只要他们努力的。”关键是培养细胞没有被辨认，所以他们仍然多，”菲茨杰拉德说。

Using a long-established technique, these donor cells will then be injected into the embryo of a freshly laid, fertilized recipient egg, forming a chick that is a "chimera". Strictly speaking a chimera isn't a clone, because it contains cells from both donor and recipient. But Fitzgerald says it will be enough if , say, 95 percent of a chicken's body develops from donor cells. "In the poultry world, it doesn't matter if it's not 100 percent," he says.

使用一个老牌的技巧，这些供体细胞将被注入新产下受精胚胎，受体卵细胞，形成一个鸡的“嵌合体”。严格的说一个嵌合体不是克隆，因为它包含了从供体和受体的细胞。但菲茨杰拉德说，这将是足够的，说，百分之95个鸡体的发展从供体细胞。”在家禽世界，不管它不是百分之100，”他说。

Another challenge for Origen is to scale up production. To do this, it has teamed up with Embrex, which produces machines that can inject vaccines into up to 50,000 eggs an hour. Embrex is now trying to modify the machines to locate the embryo and inject the cells into precisely the right spot without killing it .

另一个挑战是生产规模。这样做，它已经与embrex，生产机器，可以注射疫苗到多达50000小时。embrex正试图修改机器找到胚胎和细胞注入恰到好处的位置没有杀死它。

In future, Origen imagines freezing stem cells from different strains of chicken. If orders come in for a particular strain, millions of eggs could be produced in months or even weeks. At present , maintaining all the varieties the market might call for is too epensive for breeders, and it takes years to bread enough chickens to produce the bllions of eggs that farmers need.

在未来，俄利根想象冻干细胞从不同品种的鸡。如果订单在一个特定的应变，上百万的卵可以产生几个月甚至几周。目前，维护所有的品种，市场可能会说太种并不昂贵的培育，需要很多年的面包足够的鸡产生的bllions鸡蛋，农民需要。