Transgenic approaches to generate influenza virus resistant poultry.

这项研究的长期目标是培育出能够抵抗禽流感病毒感染的转基因鸡。实现这一目标的工作已经在进行中，已经开发出两种不同的抑制病毒复制的策略并将其引入鸡体内。这项目前的奖助金申请是为了确保经费，以发展这些策略更精密的版本。当前的目标是使抑制分子的表达随病毒感染而变化。因此，抑制分子只会在需要时表达。这将避免任何不可预见的影响，转基因表达可能对鸟类的整体生产力。这将大大拓宽我们可用的抑制方法的范围。这项工作有可能减少禽流感对商品家禽的威胁。这对食品安全、工业经济安全和动物福利都有明显的好处。它也有可能消除禽流感跨越物种屏障进入人类的一座桥梁。因此，它可以减少在人类中出现新的流感大流行病毒株的可能性。

The long term goal of this research is to generate transgenic chickens that are resistant to infection by avian influenza virus. Work towards this goal is already underway, and two different strategies to suppress virus replication have been developed and introduced into chickens. This current grant application is intended to secure funding to develop more sophisticated versions of these strategies. The immediate goal is to make the expression of the inhibitory molecules contingent upon virus infection. Thus, the inhibitory molecules would only be expressed when required. This would avoid any unforseen effects that transgene expression might have on the overall productivity of the birds. This will considerably broaden the range of inhibitory approaches available to us. This work has the potential to decrease the avian influenza threat to commercial poultry. This would have obvious benefits for food security, economic security for the industry and animal welfare. It also has the potential to remove one of the bridges by which avian influenza can cross the species barrier into humans. Thus it could reduce the likelihood of the emergence of new pandemic strains of influenza virus in man.