They probably won’t be wearing capes and tights. But will creating new “superchickens” help prevent the next human influenza pandemic? If so, chicken science may have just crossed a road in moving towards genetically engineering chickens to be resistant to the bird flu. In a study published on June 4 in eLife, scientists from Imperial College in London, the University of London, and the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute edited part of the DNA in chicken cells, which then prevented the bird flu virus from using the cells to reproduce themselves.
