TUESDAY, March 28 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers have developed cloned pigs that produce high amounts of omega-3 fatty acids in their tissues, according to a report published online March 26 in Nature Biotechnology. The authors suggest the pigs may eventually provide another source of the fatty acids for human consumption.
Researchers led by Randall S. Prather, Ph.D., from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and Yifan Dai, M.D., Ph.D., from the University of Pittsburgh, used nuclear transfer to produce the cloned pigs. The fat-1 gene, which converts omega-6 fatty acids to omega-3 fatty acids, was isolated from the roundworm C. elegans and inserted into fetal pig cells. The cells were then used to produce 10 live piglets, six of which contained the transgene.
The concentration of total omega-3 fatty acids was about three-fold higher in the cloned pigs than in wild-type pigs, with certain fatty acid types reaching a 15-fold enrichment. The muscle fat of one pig contained about 8 percent omega-3 fatty acids compared to the normal 1 percent to 2 percent. In addition, omega-6 fatty acids were reduced by 23 percent and there was a five-fold reduction in the omega-6/omega-3 ratio.
The authors said fat-1 transgenic livestock may provide a safe and economical omega-3 alternative to the declining stocks of tuna and salmon, which may be contaminated with mercury and other chemicals. In addition, they said the pigs may be a good, large animal model to study the effect of omega-3 fatty acids on coronary heart disease and immune-mediated disorders.
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