An international team led by Inra and carried out in collaboration with ALLICE, the CEA's François Jacob Institute and VetAgroSup has shown that cows can be an interesting alternative to more traditional lab animals for the confirmation of the genetic origin and the determination of the molecular mechanisms of certain rare syndromes.
Particularly, the team looked at a range of bovine autosomal dominant conditions and observed perfect genotype-phenotype[1] correlations between the affected cows and human patients with mutations in the same domains of the same proteins. The work showed that cows can be a pertinent model for the study of human genetic abnormalities, and, in certain cases, outperform murine models, in which phenotypes are sometimes attenuated.
This result has been shared through a press release.
[1] The totality of observable traits in an individual.