Transgenic cats will help in developing drugs for AIDS
Last reviewed: 16.10.2021
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The virus of feline AIDS is not able to penetrate the cells of transgenic cats, provided with a protective human protein.
Everyone knows that the spread of the AIDS virus has taken the form of an epidemic, but few have heard that there are two AIDS epidemics: one in humans, the other in cats. A human virus is called HIV, or HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), a feline virus called FIV (feline immunodeficiency virus). The feline virus causes almost the same symptoms as the human. FIV can not switch to humans, and HIV can not hit a cat, but according to the basic molecular-biochemical parameters they are indistinguishable from each other.
It is known that humans and monkeys have a special protein that prevents the development of a feline virus in the body of primates. This is TRIMCyp, it recognizes FIV proteins and destroys the viral envelope. The idea of researchers from the Clinic of Mayo (Minnesota, USA) was to equip cats with human TRIMCyp protein and thus make them resistant to the feline immunodeficiency virus. But how to achieve this? The only method by which to perform such an operation, has proved to be too unreliable and very complex. Its essence lies in the fact that some new genes are added to the nucleus of the somatic (non-sexual) cell, after which it is introduced into the egg cell. Although this method was used to create the Dolly sheep, it works only in a small number of cases.
Therefore, for cats, another technique based on the use of a modified virus was chosen. Since the feline cells are more than available for infection with the immunodeficiency virus belonging to the lentivirus group, another lentivirus equipped with the TRIMCyp gene and the green fluorescent protein gene was used as the genetic "porter". By fluorescence, it was possible to find out whether the introduction of new genetic material into cat cells had been successful.
The modified virus infected the ova of cats, after which they were fertilized and injected to the animals. A total of 22 cats were treated, each received 30 to 50 eggs.
Five cats became pregnant. Of the eleven embryos, ten had fluorescent protein genes and TRIMCyp. Five embryos developed into kittens, one of them was born stillborn, the second died after birth. It should be emphasized that success in 23% of cases is much higher than the 3% probability when applying the first of the described techniques, with the transplantation of the nucleus from the somatic cell to the sexual one. The authors also note a high percentage of pregnant cats and a high number of transgenic animals in relation to the total number of embryos. Similar in transgenic technology is indeed a major success.
But the main result, as stated in an article published in the journal Nature Methods, was that the animals eventually proved resistant to feline AIDS. When the researchers tried to infect the blood cells of transgenic kittens with the FIV virus, they failed. Now scientists will try to find out whether the animals themselves are resistant to a viral infection.
In the future, as the researchers say, cats can push the mice as the most popular laboratory animals. For example, cats are better suited for studying the work of the visual cortex of the brain, since the latter is more like a human in this sense. Studies of other human antiviral proteins on "feline material" are also planned. As for the question of whether any feline protein can be mobilized to fight human AIDS, the researchers preferred to tactfully circumvent it. Probably to avoid the yellow news headlines in the spirit of "Cat people can defeat AIDS!".