Genome Editing Technology: Revolutionary Use for Advanced Livestock Farming

Genome editing has emerged as the most coveted biotechnological advancements of the current decade, particularly in its application for the generation of animals with desired genetic traits. With the advent of engineered endonucleases like CRISPR/Cas, the process of modifying genetic elements of an organism became more precise, fast and simple. Due to the remarkable efficiency of CRISPR/Cas9, gene editing is not confined to single alterations; instead, multiple selected mutations can be concurrently introduced into genomes. Consequently, gene editing provides a parallel and precise approach to address prevailing challenges within animal agriculture, which is often limited by productivity and disease susceptibility and encompasses issues like climate change, shortage of feed and environmental sustainability. The CRISPR/Cas and associated gene editing platforms can be judiciously utilized to generate farm animals with favorable traits and phenotypes, which can produce greater and superior quality meat/milk/wool, resist diseases, tolerate thermal stress and have higher feed conversion efficiency. Moreover, the desired female only population can also be achieved by making genomic edits in embryos. By developing desired superior founder population within limited generations, it can also shorten the duration interval of conventional animal breeding programs and thus enhance the economic efficiency of farm animal husbandry enterprise. Thus, genome editing technology has great potential to revolutionize the animal agriculture system and seems to be a promising approach to deliver genetically modified farm animals with greater productivity in the near future.

With the advancement of engineered endonucleases, the CRISPR-based gene editing technologies have demonstrated their effectiveness for gene manipulation, gene regulation, chromatin manipulation, and epigenetic modulation. The principle, process and protocols of making these precise edits in a genome is evolving rapidly with the aim to bring precision, simplicity, reproducibility and cost effectiveness. Making changes in genomes of diverse array of farm animals is challenging, which requires many levels of optimizations and at the same time faces ethical issues. This Research Topic aims to present the recent advances and the challenges in the area of application of genome editing technology in different farm animals like cattle, buffalo, sheep, goat, pig, horse including the less common ones like yak, mithun, donkey etc. Utilizing gene editing for development of fitness traits, disease resilience, climate adaptation/mitigation and conservation are an area of interest. The ethical considerations, acceptability concerns, and regulatory challenges linked to genome-edited farm animals, alongside the funding opportunities available to researchers in this domain, constitute additional hurdles that warrant attention. Addressing these issues is crucial to advancing genome editing technology for the creation of high-yielding farm animals. Such advancements have the
potential to contribute significantly to ensuring both nutritional and livelihood security for millions of people in the years to come.

The aim of the current Research Topic is to cover recent technological advances, developments in supportive technologies, novel research trends and findings in the field of application of genome editing technology in farm animals. Areas to be covered in this Research Topic may include, but are not limited to:

• Development of animals with enhanced fitness through genome editing
• Application of gene editing in improving food security
• Generation of disease resilient livestock
• Gene editing to enhance climate change adaptation/mitigation in livestock
• Utilizing genome editing as a conservation tool
• Animal welfare and ethical concerns in genome editing
• Regulations for application of genome editing in livestock
• Applications of genome editing technology in a wide range of farm animals

Original Research, Brief Research Report, Review, Systematic Review, General Commentary, Hypothesis & Theory, Methods, Mini Review and Opinions are invited in this Research Topic.

Keywords: Genome editing, farm animals, production traits, disease resistance, animal breeding

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