Once DNA characteristics meet Lawrence’s selection
criteria, ViaGen experts grow the muscle tissue in a petri dish with growth medium. Active cells of con- nective tissue known as fi broblasts, located in muscle cells, begin to grow and replicate the desired DNA. ViaGen’s technicians take eggs from cull cows and
extract the nucleus from them, replacing it with DNA from the Prime, YG1 animal. That process takes less than a minute per egg. Then they bathe the egg with growth medium in a petri dish. With the zap of a weak electrical charge, the egg starts growing. Using embryo transfer technology, the viable egg is
placed in a donor cow, which then carries the result- ing fetus for an average gestation period of 285 days. The fi rst cloned animal from steer tissue was a bull
that Lawrence named Alpha, from the alpha tissue line. DNA testing indicates that Alpha is 86 percent Angus and 14 percent Brahman and is in the top 10 percent of cattle for feed effi ciency. He’s also in the top 30 percent for marbling, the top 6 percent for tenderness and the top 8 percent for palatability. Lawrence reports that Alpha is a mature, fertile bull. Next, they started with a heifer carcass tissue sample with ideal characteristics. The resulting calves were
born on different dates and Lawrence says they are triplets separated by time. “They are really expensive copies of each other,”
Lawrence says with a smile. “They look remarkably similar and they’re genetically identical. Early on, we realized we’d better ID them with ear tags.”These heif- ers are from the Gamma cell line, named Gamma One, Gamma Two and Gamma Three. They’ve been bred with semen from Alpha, with resulting fertile embryos placed in recipient cows. In the meantime, the team is growing other cell lines, beta and delta, which includes a heifer with the most impressive genetic data the team has seen in this project. Pastured at the university ranch, these experimental
animals are tended by students who make sure they’re healthy using typical ranch husbandry practices.
What does this research mean for the beef industry? “We’re in the meat business,” Lawrence says. “We
work to improve not just the quality and yield, but the production and throughput of the industry as well. The beef industry does tend to focus on high quality beef, but Laura’s Lean Beef is just the opposite. It is low
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108 The Cattleman October 2014
thecattlemanmagazine.com
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