World's first genetically engineered vaccine

 “On June 18, 1981, the U.S. government announced the creation of the world's first genetically engineered vaccine.

Foot and mouth disease (also called "hoof and mouth" disease) affects livestock -- mostly cattle, sheep, pigs and goats. Sores and weakness are the main symptoms of the disease and, while it is usually not fatal to the animals, the attempts to contain it have historically wrought havoc on international trade, tourism and the world meat industry.

The disease is spread by a virus, and many early vaccines used dead samples of the virus to inoculate animals. However, those early vaccines sometimes caused real outbreaks. In the 1970s, scientists discovered that a vaccine could be made using only a single key protein from the virus. In 1981, genetic engineering was used to produce vast quantities of the protein: by grafting some genetic material from the virus onto laboratory bacteria, the scientists tricked the bacteria into producing only that protein. A vaccine consisting of the protein alone cannot cause the disease.”

http://www.tecsoc.org/pubs/history/2001/jun18.htm

 also, lots of good Genetic Engineering material here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_engineering

Thanks for sharing the info. Foot and mouth disease is a real problem in cattle in my area too. It seems so painful to see animals suffer from it. Sometimes it is so severe that due to lesions and superinfections in udder, even the teats fall down. There are vaccine failures too because of much strain variation. there are many strains like O, A, C, .........and many more which keep on creating these havocs. here we do continuous serosurvillence for FMD too. In many countries they go for slaugther of the animals after this disease is detected but in India this is not the option.

There is an informative paper on Pandemic strain of FMD on this link

Pandemic Strain of Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus Serotype O

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol11no12/05-0908.htm

 I am not in molecular biology but when I heard that this one is the first gen. engg. vaccine, I stopped for a while. Till now I was thinking of so many vaccines to be gen. engg. Thanks for the information