The development of Russian scientists will create herds of hypoallergenic dairy cows

Scientists from the Kuban State Agrarian University (KubGAU) have developed a method for the rapid and inexpensive detection of allergens in milk, which will allow the creation of “hypoallergenic” herds of cows. This was reported to socialbites.ca by the press service of the Priority 2030 program of the Ministry of Education and Science.

Milk allergy is often associated with intolerance to casein protein. But it is available in two different versions: A1 or A2. The product with “good” A2-casein does not cause allergies. Which casein variant will be found in milk depends on the cow’s genome.

Genetic testing developed by KubGAU scientists allows you to quickly, inexpensively and easily determine whether “good” or “bad” casein is present in cow’s milk.

“A small amount of genetic material is sufficient to obtain accurate results: our method will allow to show that even a DNA molecule in a sample will contain the dangerous A1-casein variant of this cow’s milk. It takes only 20-60 minutes for a complete analysis of the sample,” he says at KubGAU. Valeria Knyazeva, a researcher, comments on socialbites.ca, author of developing an innovative method for testing beta-casein.

With this test it is possible to select a sufficient number of cows to create an entire herd that will produce hypoallergenic milk.

“The advantages of the method are also laboratory sterility, automatic registration and less stringent requirements for interpretation of results. Our development also helps us to reduce at once several time-consuming stages of traditional research and avoid classical errors and false positive test results, ”explained Kuban State Agricultural University Vice-Rector for Research, Doctor of Biology Valeria Knyazeva, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Andrey Koshchaev to socialbites.ca.

The work was carried out as part of the implementation of the strategic project “Genetics and selection in livestock and crop production” under the “Priority 2030” program of the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia.