ABSTRACT
Domesticated animals have been crucial to the development of modern affluent societies and the productivity of these animals is today an important factor in maintaining social stability. The genes for transfer may be selected on the basis of known function and predicted effect on phenotype, or by the isolation of genes by genome mapping. The major areas of animal production that are amenable to manipulation by genetic engineering are the endocrine system, intermediary metabolism, structural proteins, the immune system and novel approaches to disease resistance. One of the more exciting areas of application of genetic engineering to domestic animals is the possibility of altering intermediary metabolism in order to increase the availability of substrates identified as rate-limiting for specific production traits. There are technical limitations at present that restrict the application of the transfer of multiple genes encoding biochemical pathways. The modification of economically-important structural proteins is an attractive application of genetic engineering for improving productivity.
