Using CRISPR/Cas9 for generation the cd209 knockout is a way to get cattle breeds resistant to the Bovine leukemia virus (BLV)

¹ Core Facility “Genome editing”, Institute of Gene Biology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 119334, Vavilovast., 34/5, Moscow, Russia
² Center of Precision Genome Editing and Genetic Technologies of Biomedicine, Institute of Gene Biology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 119334, Vavilovast., 34/5, Moscow, Russia
³ Laboratory of Pathogenomics and Transcriptomics, Institute of General Pathology and Pathophysiology, 125315, Baltiyskayast., 8, Moscow, Russia
⁴ Ural Federal Agricultural Scientific Research Center of Ural Department of Russian Academy of Sciences, 620142,Belinskogost.,112 A, Ekaterinburg, Russia

^* Corresponding author: deikin@igb.ac.ru

Abstract

Bovine leukemia virus (BLV) causes enzootic leukemia - a chronic infectious disease occurring against the background of embedding the virus in the genome of B-lymphocytes and leading to malignization, invasion of tumor cells in organs and the formation of tumors. The disease is common in the United States, Japan, and Asia. In Russia, up to 30% is infected with BLV. Moreover, there is evidence of the presence of antibodies to the BLV virus in some groups of people, and the relationship between BLV and cancer in humans is widely discussed. All this indicates an urgent need to study BLV and create breeds resistant to it. The development of approaches to solving this problem is complicated by the fact that the receptor through which the infection is carried out is still unknown. Recently, it has been suggested that the virus penetrates the animal's lymphocytes using the CD209 molecule. In this paper, we propose a genome editing system based on CRISPR/Cas9 to get a knockout for this gene. We assume that animals obtained using the presented genome editing system will be resistant to infection with the bovine leukemia virus.