In the future we might be using fish as a source of medically important chemicals, says a new paper in the journal Marine Biotechnology.
A group of cell biologists from the Division of Cell Sciences in the School of Biological Sciences at University of Southampton, UK, has just completed a study which allowed them to produce human coagulation factor VII (hFVII) in the embryos of Zebra danios, tilapia and African catfishes.
The workers injected a plasmid containing human coagulation factor VII (hFVII) complementary DNA, regulated by a cytomegalovirus promoter, into the fertilised fish eggs and managed to detect the hFVII produced using several different techniques.
They conclude that this study could bring forward a new use for transgenic fish in producing proteins, like hFVII, which are important in medicine.
For more details read the full paper: Hwang G, Mller F, Rahman MA, Williams DW, Murdock PJ, Pasi KJ, Goldspink G, Farahmand H, Maclean N. (2004) - Fish as Bioreactors: Transgene Expression of Human Coagulation Factor VII in Fish Embryos. Marine Biotechnology (NY). 2004 Apr.