RESEARCH
LIC helps fight pandemic By Gerald Piddock
For over a century, LIC has provided genetics expertise, information and technology to the dairy sector, but covid-19 saw it don a new hat in the battle against the global pandemic.
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n innocuous piece of laboratory equipment used for DNA testing by LIC suddenly became one of the country’s most sought-after machines during the covid-19 pandemic, as the Government scrambled to find a way to efficiently test masses of people for the deadly disease. Called the Kingfisher, it allows scientists to simultaneously extract the DNA of up to 96 animals at once for testing. That same process could be used to extract the DNA from humans or RNA from viruses, so scientists can carry out a PCR test for covid-19. DHB’s around the country had the means to analyse RNA, but not at the scale that was needed during the covid lockdown in March last year, LIC general manager of operations and service David Chin says. “They were needing to do thousands of
these tests every week. I think there were about 16 of these in the country at that time and we had eight of them,” he says. All of a sudden around the world, governments rushed to buy Kingfishers for mass covid testing. As the DHB’s and Ministry of Health (MoH) was rapidly scrambling to find the necessary equipment to cope with the sudden demand for testing, LIC chief executive Wayne McNee contacted health authorities and the Kingfisher was loaned for two months while they waited for their own machine to arrive. While the LIC GeneMark laboratory was also receiving samples from farmers who autumn calve, they had plenty of capacity because the laboratory is geared up for the spring calving peak. “We were lucky because we weren’t at our peak because at peak, they’re being used every single day. If it had happened in October, it would have been a real problem,” Chin says.
The covid-19 pandemic meant the laboratory equipment used by LIC suddenly became hard to source as governments rushed to order the supplies necessary to undergo testing for the deadly disease.
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LIC general manager of operations and service David Chin says their animal health testing service wasn’t badly affected when they loaned the Government their equipment.
Fortunately for LIC, their animal health testing service was different to the covid PCR test, which meant it was largely unaffected by the lockdown. LIC technical manager Mark Walker says the co-operative had been using the machines for years. “Internationally, a lot of people have cottoned on to what we have cottoned on to – that these machines are a very fast and effective way of getting DNA out of samples in a high throughput manner. “I even saw a press conference where Donald Trump was standing next to a table with one sitting on it,” Walker says, adding there are alternatives to extracting DNA, but those processes were less efficient. “By the time it takes one of these things to do 96 DNA extractions, a person doing it another way might only be able to do eight or nine,” he says. It was not just the Kingfisher that was sought-after. Single-use disposable tips, which house the sample where the DNA/PCR is used, also became a hot commodity. LIC typically uses about 20 boxes containing these tips per month. During the covid lockdown, LIC’s supplier told them there were five boxes left
DAIRY FARMER
March 2021
