USU professor involved in cloning and genetic engineering

Growing up on her grandmother’s farm in a mountain region south of Siberia, Irina Polejaeva fostered an interest in animals.

That led to a degree in animal science and a PhD in developmental and stem cell biology at the National Institute of Animal Science in Moscow.

Now a professor at Utah State University her work as an animal scientist involves cloning and genetically engineering animals. She reflects back on her early work in this science as being quite different from the animal genetic engineering of today.

“Definitely in the last five to seven years, the genetic engineering field has had an expedited evolvement,” she said. “Now it’s much more precise and much easier to generate genetically modified animals, compared to 20 years ago.”

Six years ago, after 15 years away from USU in the private sector, she returned, becoming part of the USTAR Veterinary Diagnostics and Infectious Disease group.

“The focus of my program now is to produce large animal models that will help us understand human disease and find cures for a variety of human diseases.

“We are working with a model of cystic fibrosis in sheep which is quite a difficult disease to treat. We still have issues. Shortening lives is the outcome of that progressive disorder.

“We are working with a goat model of atrial fibrillation, a condition that affects quite a large population. Up to 10 percent are affected by this condition by the age of 75 to 80 years of age. We are using these models trying to understand how the disease progresses.”

She said making animals disease resistant in the course of the work, it affects not only animal health but, potentially, human health.

She is also busy now as co-chair of the organizing committee for a large animal genetic engineering summit in June in Park City.

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2 Comments

  • Genetic Engineering December 25, 2018 at 10:58 pm Reply

    Genetic Engineering is a set of technologies used to change the genetic makeup of cells, including the transfer of genes within and across species boundaries to produce improved or novel organisms. It will help to cure many genetic issues in future. It has high scope to build career in it. Thanks for informative article, keep sharing.

  • Genetic Engineering February 17, 2019 at 9:59 pm Reply

    Genetic engineering is the manipulation of genetic material by either molecular biological techniques or by selective breeding. It is recombinant DNA technology, involves the group of techniques used to cut up and join together genetic material, and to introduce the resulting hybrid DNA into an organism in order to form new combinations of heritable genetic material. Thanks for putting out top notch content all the time. I would like to be here again to find another masterpiece article.

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