• Question: Would it be possible to create an entirely new gene for sheep? Changing the colours of the coat to a red or blue maybe another colour or pattern?

    Asked by booklover to Alison, Artem, Caroline, John, Gunther on 13 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Artem Evdokimov

      Artem Evdokimov answered on 13 Jun 2012:

      Hi,

      Good question!

      And my answer is a little bit long so please bear with me:

      Sheep’s wool color is determined by a combination of factors – genetics plays a role and also sheep’s health and its environment (see for example references below):

      http://www.centreplus.com.au/sites/centreplus.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/1/files/pdf/IJSWS_DJB_2006_54%283%29_1.pdf
      http://www.aaabg.org/proceedings18/wp-content/uploads/sites/1/files/smith390.pdf

      There are three ways Nature generates a color (broadly speaking) – some colors are due to small molecule pigments (flowers, for instance) whereas others are due to colored proteins (e.g. hemoglobin in our red blood or hemocyanin in the blue blood of squid and crabs). Finally some of the Nature’s more spectacular colors are generated by physical (rather than chemical) means – by interference of light: this is the way butterfly wings and peacock feathers get their colors. To be exact, peacock feathers have a ‘chemical’ color in them – melanin – that is brown or black, but the shiny metallic reds, greens, or blues are generated by interference of light waves in the micro-structures of the feather. Interference is the same phenomenon that gives oil slicks and soap bubbles their flowing colors, in case you’re wondering.

      So in order to make a sheep with a new color we could in theory endow it with a pigment of some sort, or try to modulate the color by means of interference.

      In practice this is very hard to do – because genetic basis for color has more than one element and because sheep are very complicated in terms of how their genes interact with one another (in this of course it is no different from any other living being). So while we probably could do it, there seems to be little to no benefit in this. Besides, the color would have to survive the processes involved in converting raw wool into fabric – without washing away or changing.

      Patterns are even harder because there’s not really any way we can program skin to create specific shapes, at least not yet.

      Again, this is an excellent question 🙂 Keep thinking.

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