Animal scientists at Utah State University, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute, and Washington State University, for the first time have created goats that can serve as surrogate sires to speed the spread of desirable genetic characteristics.
Goats were selected for the study because they are an important livestock species in much of the developing world. USU scientists used the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing tool to produce male goats that were born sterile. But later, when stem cells from a desirable donor animal were introduced, the young goats produced sperm with DNA only of the donor animal.
