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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

murine biosynthesis, threonine, mice, amino acids

College

Life Sciences

Department

Physiology and Developmental Biology

Abstract

Threonine is one of the 20 common amino acids found in nature. It is a limiting factor for the growth of many non-ruminant animals such as swine and mice and must be obtained from their diet. When threonine is absent from the diet of these animals, the other amino acids present cannot be fully utilized. The result is poor conversion of plant to animal protein (1). We proposed producing transgenic mice using the genes from the known five-step bacterial pathway for threonine synthesis (2). The introduction of these bacterial pathways to mice would eliminate the need for dietary supplementation of threonine. When successful, this model will be used by the USDA to produce threonine independent swine.

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