A More Humane (sure) Livestock Industry, Brought to You by Crispr
(Crispr…a genetic engineering tool that uses a CRISPR sequence of DNA and its associated protein to edit the base pairs of a gene.)
Cow 401 and her herdmates were the product of two and a half years of research, Van Eenennaam’s attempt to create a strain of gene-edited cattle specially suited to the needs of the beef industry. Had everything gone as planned, all the calves in this experiment would have been born male—physiologically, at least. Like humans, cattle carry two sex chromosomes; those born XX are female, and those born XY are male. But it isn’t the Y that makes the man.
VLA Comment: Note this as the world accepts gender dysphoria.…It’s a single gene, called SRY, that briefly flickers to life as an embryo grows and instructs it to develop male traits. Using Crispr, Van Eenennaam’s team added a copy of SRY to the X chromosome too. That way, even if a cow was born genetically female, she’d be expected to appear male all the same.