One of the benefits of doing a PhD is the opportunity to travel and share your work with other people - which helps, in a small way, to make up for the significant decrease in income and the gruelling marathon of writing a 100,000 word thesis.
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Of course, if you're foolish enough to start your PhD three months before a global pandemic, the opportunities have been limited. So when the chance came to attend the 12th World Congress of Genetics Applied to Livestock Production (WCGALP) in Rotterdam (the Netherlands), I grabbed it with both hands and was delighted to be able to speak.
WCGALP is known as the Olympic Games of livestock genetics. It runs every four years and features five lecture streams running simultaneously over five days, covering diverse species (including cattle and sheep - but also eel, bees and ostriches) and topics (including statistics, software and computing, breeding strategies and epigenetics).
READ MORE FROM EE CHENG OOI: Haplotypes affect herd fertility
I won't talk about my work in this article, but I thought it might be interesting to share some findings from the conference. There are hundreds - maybe even over a thousand - presentations, so rather than bore you with the details on insect breeding strategies or the selection of genetic parameter estimates, I'll give a general overview of talks for a dairy farmer audience.
Firstly, the environment was a 'hot' topic at the conference (sorry, I couldn't help myself). Climate change has been a worldwide concern, with a global focus on methane emissions in ruminants. At the moment, however, nitrogen emissions are particularly relevant to Dutch farmers, who have been told to reduce their livestock numbers to meet EU quotas.
All around the country, you can see the effects of their protests, with red handkerchiefs, upside-down flags and signs declaring, 'NO FARMERS NO FOOD' hanging out of windows and propped up against fences.
These issues were reflected in the number of talks discussing these topics at WCGALP, with geneticists making headway on both the reduction of emissions through selective breeding, and the adaptation of livestock for hotter climates. In the same vein of responsible breeding, dealing with inbreeding was also covered at the conference.
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Health traits were another source of interest. Breeding for more resilient youngstock was a recurring topic throughout the session, with a focus on reducing respiratory disease and scours in calves. Although genetics are not able to replace good management - colostrum management, hygiene, nutrition, and shelter are probably always going to matter - breeding calves with better immune systems is likely to be a possibility.
Novel traits, in general, were also a focus, with data for new phenotypes - such a body weight and behaviour - stemming from advances in sensor technology and artificial intelligence.
As a massive science-fiction nerd, I thoroughly enjoyed the sessions on gene-editing and society. Some countries have very strict rules regarding gene-editing, which can make it difficult to perform this type of research - so an international conference is an opportunity to put all the pieces together. Most talks focused on the societal implications of this technology, and how to engage consumers in discussions around ethics and acceptability.
The final talk of the session, however, was presented by a PhD student from the United States who successfully used CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to produce a bull which looked completely normal but was missing the tissue required to produce sperm. The implication was that you could insert spermatic tissue from a high genetic merit bull, and then use these modified bulls as a chimeric delivery system. I had to pick my jaw up off the floor multiple times during this session - certainly, the future is now.
Overall, however, one of my strongest impressions was that we still have a lot to learn from animal genetics. Human genetics is rather more well-funded than livestock genetics, and the availability of high quality data has increased significantly in the past decade. However, rather than consisting of second-rate science, animal geneticists have the capacity to complement and even sometimes exceed the achievements of our human counterparts, producing insights based on the data generated by farmers.
*Ee Cheng Ooi is a cattle veterinarian undertaking a PhD in fertility and genetics at DairyBio. All comments and information in this article are intended to be of general nature only. Please consult the farm's vet for advice, protocols and/or treatments that are tailored to the herd's particular needs. Comments and feedback are welcome, email ecooi.vet@gmail.com.
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