Enhancing Health

Leveraging our unique expertise, infrastructure and resources to understand animal and human health, ageing and disorders.

A graphic showing the relationship between promoting human health, animal research, and innovation in veterinary applications

Key Challenges

Meeting the challenges  

  • Roslin aims to alleviate causes of poor welfare, understand the impact of environmental challenges and human interventions on animal health and welfare, and develop reliable indicators to objectively evaluate strategies to enhance these.  

  • We also aim to solve other morbidities (e.g. lameness), understand the impact of stress, demonstrate benefits of specific husbandry practices, and predict and control aggression. 

  • We work with farmers and breeders to mitigate the impact of climate change on animal health and welfare and to breed farm animals that thrive in current environments and can adapt well to changes. 

  • The Division of Bacteriology is working in partnership with various stakeholders including public health bodies, animal breeding and pharmaceutical companies to translate our findings into improved animal and public health, and improved food security. 

  • Research in the Division of Functional Genetics develops and exploit novel stem cell, organoid and embryo models together with gene editing to advance our understanding of the rules of life, at the levels of cells, tissues and whole animals. 

  • The Division of Epidemiology is improving both animal and human health through development of improved digital data capture, improved stewardship and use of antimicrobials and embracing a One Health approach to disease control to improve public and animal health. Our research supports large scale zoonotic disease control interventions to reduce animal and human burden and improve animal welfare. 

  • The Division of Genome Biology leverages genomics and high-throughput sequencing to decode functions within animal genomes and reveal the genetic and epigenetic basis for complex traits. We employ comparative (epi)genomics to understand how genomes evolve and to reveal genomic variants underlying differences in key traits among species.   

  • The Division of Quantitative Biology is using genomic data to improve breeding and management of livestock and companion animals, investigating genetic factors affecting satiety in broiler breeders, and developing AI/ML methods for smart animal breeding and health monitoring. 

  • The Division of Translational Bioscience is leveraging our unique expertise, infrastructure and resources to understand animal and human health, ageing and disorders. We aim to understand, with the aid of farm animal models, the genetic basis of susceptibility to critical illness to inform the identification and validation of drug targets to help humans and animal patients survive and recover. We use natural or induced disease large animal models (for example using genetic engineering) as a basis to better understand, diagnose and treat several human diseases, including lung and neurodegenerative disease, for which there is no effective treatment at present. 

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