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Genetic researchers at New York University have finally isolated the "urine gene." |
by D. Trull
Enigma Editor
dtrull@parascope.com
All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all -- and, much to the chagrin of pet owners and zookeepers everywhere, the Big Guy also made all those critters pee and poop upon His creation in never-ending abundance. Animal urine is among the most fearsome pollutants that threaten the environment and nice living room carpeting, but geneticists have unveiled a startling new technology that could tame those savage liquid excretions to humanity's benefit.
No, they're not breeding puppies and piglets that never have to go potty (not yet, anyhow), but they have developed a method for producing highly valuable drugs using the urine of cloned animals.
Let's start off by reviewing the often-overlooked reasons behind scientific exploration into cloning, which are more mundane than the media hysteria over Dolly the sheep and some wacko who wants to start up a human-cloning Qwik-E-Mart. Genetics researchers have a number of practical goals at stake here beyond Nobel Prizes and appearances on Jerry Springer.
For instance, they hope to genetically engineer animals whose bodies produce certain substances needed for medical purposes in humans. These animals could then be cloned, thereby providing a rich supply of needed pharmaceutical raw materials. This was the idea behind the breeding of Polly, the second world-famous test-tube sheep, whose DNA contains human genes. Polly is expected to produce Factor IX, a human blood-clotting agent used in treating hemophilia. The only problem is that the substance will be yielded in Polly's milk, and it will take a few years before Polly is old enough to get pregnant and lactate.
For a group of less patient scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, that just wasn't soon enough. If only there was some other biological by-product to exploit, they restlessly pondered, something plentiful that comes freely flowing out of every mammal right from the minute they're born, gushing forth as from a congenital geyser in infant and adult alike...
Bingo! Pee-pee would be A-OK for getting DNA, ASAP!
The idea of synthesizing useful proteins and hormones from animal urine is scarcely unheard of. Estrogen, for example, is commonly derived from the tinkle of female horses. But because urine is of course a waste product, not a secretion like milk that gets manufactured according to an inborn recipe, scientists have never been able to isolate a "urine gene" that governs the composition of the fluid. Until now.
Genetics researchers at New York University have discovered a gene they call uroplakin, which manifests itself only the the lining of the bladder. A team at the USDA's Agricultural Research Service used these findings to breed mice whose uroplakin gene was intermingled with the gene that produces human growth hormone. They selected this hormone since it is easily traced in genetic experiments. And after a careful series of tests that brought drug urinalysis into a whole new dimension, they found that this kooky idea really worked.
Genetic engineering is a trial and error proposition inherently (pun intended), and as is the norm, some of the mutant mice were born with the altered gene but didn't produce the hormone, and others didn't possess the new gene at all. But several of the mice commenced to urinating enough human growth hormone to spawn a Jethro Bodine. That's where the cloning part comes in: you fiddle around until you find the perfect specimen that does exactly what you want, and clone that one a few thousand times. Then sit back, give 'em plenty to drink, and watch the genetic goodies come pouring down like rain.
The USDA scientists point out that their urine harvesting technique has several advantages over the milk method. As already noted, urine offers that instant gratification factor that clonemakers love, and it's more of an equal opportunity bodily fluid than milk, since males are just as good at peeing as females. And the scientists hope it will be easier to extract pure proteins from urine than from the more chemically complex structure of milk. It might seem way more icky to contemplate drugs that originated in animal wee-wee, but then you have to remember, milk comes from a pretty unappetizing source, too.
And anyway, it's just like what they say about beer: you don't buy medicine derived from mutated animal clone urine, you just borrow it.
Source: Reuters
© Copyright 1998 ParaScope, Inc.
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