CRISPR variant produces TB-resistant cows

With over 10 million active cases in 2015 and close to 2 million deaths, tuberculosis (TB) remains a leading cause of death worldwide. Moreover, the rampant spread of drug-resistant TB has rendered many common therapies and vaccines useless. Yet now, a team of researchers from the College of Veterinary Medicine at Northwest A&F University in Shaanxi, China, has successfully utilized an innovative form of the genome-editing technique CRISPR to insert a new gene into the cow genome, rendering the animals much more resistant to tuberculosis.