
Thousands of goats and rabbits vanish from major biotech lab - retupmoc01
http://www.nature.com/news/thousands-of-goats-and-rabbits-vanish-from-major-biotech-lab-1.19411
======
JoeAltmaier
Just their cavalier disregard for federal regulation should get them shut
down.

------
crackpotbaker
Can't really understand how can a body of an animal, which wastes energy on
heating itself, digestion, breathing, brain function, be efficient enough to
produce antibodies. They must be pricing the antibodies like they're diamonds.

It's hilarious to think how much of a disruptive entity one could be by just
inventing a -no-animal-middleman- production process, since almost everyone
seems to be insane enough to do it using animals.

edit: thanks for all the explanations...

and downvotes.

~~~
fabian2k
It is certainly a rather complicated and expensive process, but I think you're
dramatically underestimating the complexity of the immune system. This isn't
something you can simply reproduce in a cell culture, there is a lot involved
in an immune reaction that finally results in specific antibodies.

~~~
icegreentea
There are recombinant antibodies produced in bacteria/yeast lines.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3906537/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3906537/)

The article linked gives a good summary of state of the art (as of 2014) of
antibody production.

In short, to create full length antibodies, we need mammalian cells to perform
modification to the protein after its been synthesized to become a full
antibody.

However, maintaining large cell cultures of mammalians cells is actually a
huge head ache - it really is easier just to maintain the whole creature. And
once you're at that phase, you can not only take advantage of all the
mammalian cellular machinery, but you can take advantage of the whole milk
thing (remember milk is a good source of protein? All that protein is
synthesized and PUT into there. Adding another protein to the mix is
relatively straight forward).

Put another way, using whole mammals to grow antibodies is roughly as insane
as using whole mammals for meat or milk. Sure, if you can overcome the massive
scientific and engineering hurdles, there are theoretically more energetically
efficient ways to do it. But good luck.

~~~
crackpotbaker
yeah, meat and milk, insane too.

I'd rather not filter all that food through an animal, I'd gladly get the
cheap quality nutrients up front.

