Farm animals are important biomedical models

作者：Debora L. Hamernik · 发表于：Animal Frontiers · 年份：2019 · DOI：10.1093/af/vfz026 · 被引用次数：43 · 研究领域：Xenotransplantation and immune response、Animal Genetics and Reproduction、Animal health and immunology

This issue of Animal Frontiers, “Farm animals are important biomedical models,” describes several examples in which cattle, sheep, pigs, or chickens provide an excellent physiological model for studies related to human health or disease (Figure 1). While previous reports have discussed the use of domestic animals as dual-purpose models that benefit agricultural and biomedical research (Ireland et al., 2008), this issue of Animal Frontiers provides additional and novel examples of the value of farm animals for biomedical research. Because farm animals are larger in size than laboratory species, scientists are able to collect larger volumes and more frequent samples of blood without significant changes in blood chemistry or substantive changes in blood volume as well as larger or more frequent tissue biopsies, thereby allowing the study of changes in hormones, metabolites, immune factors, or cellular components in the same animal over time. Many of these studies revealed that the physiology of humans is more closely related to the physiology of farm animals than to rodents. Finally, the human genome sequence is more similar to the genome sequences of cattle and pigs compared with rodents (Humphray et al., 2007; Tellam et al., 2009); thus, cattle and pigs may be better models for many human genetic diseases. Schematic depicting the use of cattle, pigs, sheep, and chickens as models for biomedical research. The article by Proudfoot et al. (2019) discusses use of gene editing in p...