ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the potential that exists in altering the milk composition or 'designing' milk by nutritional and genetic approaches so as to achieve specific health and/or processing opportunities. By combining the two approaches—the genetic work and the diet studies researchers are hoping to develop 'designer milk' tailored to consumer preferences or rich in specific milk components that have health implications. Rapid development of genetic technology has placed the dairy processors open to improvement by modern biotechnology, while novel horizons beckon in nutrition, food technology and pharmacology. Milk composition can be dramatically altered using gene transfer. Introduction of deoxy ribonucleic acid (DNA) technology in the dairy science field has enabled to identify new genetic polymorphism and revealed molecular background of lacto-protein gene expression. Cow's milk is an allergic trigger in a significant fraction of infants and β-lactoglobulin, which is not found in human milk, is believed to be one of the culprits.
