The Bioengineered Animal Farm GENZYME TRANSGENICS has won a patent for DNA technology that utilizes animals as factories for proteins helpful to animals. Transgenics is the process of taking DNA from one species and implanting it into the genetic structure of another. The desired effect is to produce human therapeutics in the milk of animals, to be later isolated and administered to humans. Nature Biotechnology outlines how collaborating scientists from Genzyme, Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, and Louisiana State University produced the world's first cloned transgenic goats. The three identical females, born in October and November 1998, are capable of producing milk that contains a protein that regulates blood clotting in humans. The recombinant human antithrombin III (rhAIII) protein is in the late stages of testing on patients undergoing cardiopulmonary bypass, said Patricia Roketenetz, at Genzyme. But why make medicines in an animal instead of in a lab? "Certain proteins are very complex, large molecules that are difficult to recreate in a lab setting," said Overstrom. "Cells produced in cultures really aren't amenable to large-scale commercial production." And goats are an attractive bet, researchers said, because they're easy to manage, they produce a lot of milk, and they multiply quickly