LIFE, UH, FINDS A WAY

Alabama Scientists Eye Gator DNA as a Solution to Catfish Diseases

Researchers at Auburn University are seeking to answer the question that mankind has asked itself for millennia: How can we build a better catfish?

Scientific progress allows us the means to grasp at answers to tough, fascinating, important questions, the latest of which appears to be: What if we took alligator DNA and plugged it into a catfish? That’s the line of inquiry being pursued by the mad geniuses over at Alabama’s Auburn University, who are up to their necks in gator genes as they experiment with ways to improve disease resistance in catfish. High-yield commercial production of catfish is no easy feat, with roughly 40 percent of the farmed animals succumbing to disease every year, Auburn researcher Rex Dunham told MIT Technology Review last month. Dunham’s team are experimenting with a particular alligator gene known to code for a peptide called cathelicidin, which is believed to have antimicrobial properties; the protein is believed to help gators heal from wounds without infection. Their research indicates that catfish with edited genes had a survival ride “between two- and five-fold higher” than their unedited counterparts, according to their paper. (Published last month on the preprint repository bioRxiv, the paper has yet to be peer reviewed.) Even better, the modification is not believed to affect the taste of the catfish meat. “I would eat it in a heartbeat,” Dunham said.