Can CRISPR engineer immunity to avian flu in chickens?

Avian flu in chickens can kill millions of birds and cost billions in damages. Can genetic engineering help?
Sign up for the Freethink Weekly newsletter!
A collection of our favorite stories straight to your inbox

Avian influenza viruses are rightly feared for their pandemic potential. No one wants a repeat of the 18 deaths avian flu caused in Hong Kong in 1997 — much less the 50 million deaths in 1918.

But the most immediate threat is avian flu in chickens, not humans. The 2015 avian influenza outbreak in the U.S. cost over $3 billion, as millions of birds were culled. 

Now, Israeli firm eggXYt (you’ll get it in a second; read that name again) is hoping to use genetic engineering to produce chickens resistant to bird flu. 

The 2015 avian influenza outbreak in the U.S. cost over $3 billion, as millions of birds were culled. 

“Early on, we identified disease prevention in poultry as a problem worth solving,” eggXYt co-founder and CEO Yehuda Elram told Poultry World

“With AI (avian influenza) in particular, whenever an outbreak is reported, typically all birds within a certain radius must be culled by law, regardless of whether or not they have been infected.” 

In U.S. farms, in 2015, that meant 50 million birds, Elram said.

To prevent that from happening again — not to mention preventing the virus from jumping species into humans — eggXYt has licensed GEiGS, a CRISPR gene editing technology from Tropic Biosciences, to “develop genetic resistance in chickens against Avian Influenza virus,” according to their joint press release.

The tech was originally developed to create tropical plants more resistant to disease. It “harnesses naturally occurring defense mechanisms to directly attack disease agents,” Tropic co-founder and CSO Eyal Maori said in the press release.

GEiGS uses a badass-sounding technique, known as RNA silencing or RNA interference (RNAi). RNAi is effectively a “mute button” for certain genes — intercepting genetic orders and erasing them before the cell can turn them into proteins. 

Animals and plants already use RNAi to regulate their own genes — turning down the volume on some protein, for example.

eggXYt will edit the chicken genome to create RNAi that silences genetic orders that come from the influenza virus. In theory, destroying orders from the virus means that it can’t hijack cells to reproduce, leaving the chickens effectively immune to infection.

“We will redirect these genes to target the virus itself, preventing it from replicating in the cell. The value of this platform is that the changes made to the genome are minimal; we hope this will accelerate regulatory approval processes and allow us to bring our product to the market,” Elram told Poultry World.

We’d love to hear from you! If you have a comment about this article or if you have a tip for a future Freethink story, please email us at [email protected].

Related
Boosted Breeding and beyond: 3 tech trends that could end world hunger
A world without hunger is possible, and the development and deployment of new farming technologies could be one key to manifesting it.
New AI generates CRISPR proteins unlike any seen in nature
An AI that generates CRISPR proteins is opening the door to gene editors with capabilities beyond what we’ve found in nature.
New study challenges long-held assumption about cancer
Genetic mutations may not be necessary for cancer to develop, challenging a long-held assumption about the disease.
How turning off one gene causes mice to grow 6 legs
A study of embryo development in mice led to the creation of a mutant mouse fetus with an extra pair of legs in place of genitals.
The threat of avian flu — and what we can do to stop it
Avian flu is infecting cows on US dairy farms, and now a person has caught it — but new research could help us avoid a bird flu pandemic.
Up Next
scarification vaccination
Subscribe to Freethink for more great stories