THE first steps have been taken towards creating a cheap edible vaccine to protect sheep and goats against goats’ plague, a serious problem for farmers across Africa, the Middle East and south Asia.
M. S. Shaila’s team at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore has genetically modified peanut plants to produce one of the coat proteins of the peste des petits ruminants (PPR) virus. (The leaves of peanuts are often used as fodder in India.) Sheep fed leaves from the modified plants produce high levels of antibodies to the protein, hemagglutinin neuraminidase, she found. The next, crucial step will be to see if sheep fed…
