Goats bioengineered to provide human milk

Moscow: Russia has bred transgenic goats which give milk identical to human milk and could be used as an alternative to breast feeding as it contains the human protein known as lactoferrin, absent in dairy animals, according to a report.
Lactoferrin protein, present in human milk, protects a newborn baby against viruses and bacteria until the baby’s own immunity system becomes resistant enough. “The first two kids with a human genome in their DNA were raised back in 2007 in the village of Goltsovo, outside Moscow, and were named Lac-1 and Lac-2, after lactoferrin,” RIA Novosti reported.
These two goats and their offspring became part of a joint Russian-Belarus BelRosTransgen research project, aimed at studying the properties of goat milk containing lactoferrin.
Experiments to obtain goat milk with lactoferrin have been going on in Russia and Belarus for the last five years.
Scientists chose the goat as a “supplier” of the human milk protein because this animal is easy to keep and is not susceptible to disease. More importantly, goat milk causes no allergic reactions in infants. PTI