The world's first successful clone of a pig using AI! Nankai University did it

In the super AI control, the machine automatically clones human embryos, automatically sends them to the nutrient pool for cultivation, and raises them to become human flesh batteries...

Of course, this cannot happen in the real world To create a human being in this way, even if a few genes of a living human embryo are genetically modified, the whole world will be in an uproar. However, there are tens of millions of mammals, and humans cannot create humans like this. But if humans create pigs like this, it is of course a great technological breakthrough.

Nankai completed the world's first AI cloned pig

AI-empowered, fully automated process of cloned pig breeding, the world's first crown was won by researchers from the School of Artificial Intelligence of Nankai University in China at the end of March 2022 The team won.

This news was disclosed by Nankai University in a low-key manner at the end of May 2022. Although the detailed paper of the relevant research has not yet been released, it did not take long for the technology and industry circles to notice the news.

On March 31, 2022, in the robot operation process with no human intervention at all and each step controlled by AI autonomously, the School of Artificial Intelligence of Nankai University in China The research team of Professor Zhao Xin successfully made an ordinary "surrogate" sow pregnant for 110 days and gave birth to 7 cloned purebred Landrace piglets.

According to a press release from Nankai University, Professor Zhao’s team used AI-related technologies to make improvements in every cloning step:

Used computer vision technology to establish the largest centimeter-level and smallest sub-micron The global microscopic field of view with a level of resolution improves operating efficiency and enables batch cloning operations; through automatic analysis of cell force algorithms, the automation of robotic cloning operations based on minimum force is realized; intracellular strain assessment brought about by machine learning technology , reducing the damage to oocytes during the cloning operation, improving the embryo development rate after the cloning operation, and achieving precision in the cloning operation. Only in this way can we create another breakthrough on the world's first achievement of using a robot to clone a pig in 2017.

#In 2017, key steps such as inserting the nucleus into the egg cells of pregnant sows were still done manually. With the help of AI in 2022, the manpower of these critical steps can be saved.

AI cloning of pigs is both accurate and fast, freeing up manpower with high efficiency

The industry and scientific research circles have noticed this, and this is why: if the cloning technology of breeding pigs can be completely separated from manual operations , then the production efficiency will have the prospect of factoryization, and the money will be unlimited.

Nankai’s press release mentioned: “Using cloning technology to massively expand the original pigs of the grandparent generation, using artificial cloning, the operation steps are many and difficult, and there is an extreme shortage of qualified personnel for cloning operations, which cannot really solve the problem. The problem of large-scale demand for original pigs produced by grandfathers."

In an interview with the South China Morning Post, Mr. Pan Dengke, who successfully cloned pigs for the first time in China in 2005, said that AI automatic pig cloning technology is really necessary. If it can be implemented, it can save scientific researchers from labor-intensive and time-consuming drudgery. Pan Dengke, an entrepreneurial CEO who now runs a biotechnology company in Chengdu, a major pig-raising province, said that when he was a scientific researcher, he had to repeat the "somatic cell nuclear transfer" (SCNT) steps of the cloning task more than a thousand times a day, and he was exhausted. The root cause of the disease has been revealed, and the patient has suffered from long-term back pain.

The SCNT step of extracting the pregnant oocyte, removing the nucleus, and then moving the donor somatic cell nucleus into the enucleated oocyte is the key to the cloning operation. And if there is a slight error in the manual operator's force, this step will fail.

#According to a press release from Nankai University, after using AI to machine clone pigs, the force accuracy of robot operation has been significantly improved. The blastocyst rate that marks successful cloning is 10% when operated manually and 27.5% when operated by AI. The blastocyst rate is increased by 2.75 times.

The number of single-birth surrogate sows that received cloned embryos was less than 5 on average during manual operation. When AI automated pig cloning was promoted, the number was 24 in two batches of 3 births, with an average of 8 piglets per single birth. , an increase of more than 60%.

In addition, the research team’s first batch of fully automated cloned pigs have been used for breeding production. 9 of the 13 healthy cloned pigs have retained seeds, with a seed retention rate of 69%, which is 35% higher than that of ordinary breeding pigs. Nearly double the comparison.

China's pig industry has a huge demand, and AI cloned pig technology can make it look good

China is now the world's largest consumer and producer of pork, and the demand for breeding pigs is huge. Sows are bred every year The number of replacements is 13 million, and the number of breeding boars is more than 300,000.

The total number of pigs in China has remained above 400 million all year round, and the per capita annual pork consumption is 30-35 kilograms, which is close to the EU level. China's pork production was 54.04 million tons in 2018, 42.55 million tons in 2019, and 41.13 million tons in 2020.

The world’s largest pork production is still unable to satisfy the world’s largest total pork consumption. China imports millions of tons of pork every year.

Coupled with the introduction of African swine fever from Russia to China in 2018-2019, the total number of healthy pigs in China has dropped sharply due to epidemic prevention and control. This has brought an almost devastating impact to the breeding industry and has also increased the pressure on pork imports.

Even in 2021 when the new crown epidemic is raging, China still imported 3.31 million metric tons of pork.

#China’s domestic pig breeding industry relies on imported pigs from abroad. In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic first emerged and logistics was chaotic, China also imported about 30,000 breeding pigs throughout the year.

Because China’s import of original breed pigs from the great-grandfather is restricted by the country of origin, it can only import original breed pigs from the grandfather’s generation that degrade quickly. They usually degrade after about 3 years of breeding. Therefore, the business process of original breed pigs is “import, The cycle of degradation, reimportation, and degradation again.

According to the official statement of the Ministry of Agriculture of China in 2021, key indicators such as litter size and feed conversion rate of the core breeding groups of China's pig industry are still 10%-30% behind those of breeding pig exporting countries.

So any technology that enables large-scale and sustainable breeding of Chinese breeding pigs will have broad profit margins. If the hot AI fast money seizes this opportunity, it may create the next trend.

Reference materials:

http://news.nankai.edu.cn/ywsd/system/2022/05/31/030051550.shtml

https:// www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3180067/chinese-scientists-produce-worlds-first-pigs-cloned-entirely

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