I’m not a biologist, but I’d be very interested in knowing how they overcame such problems as difference in body chemistry, enzymes, blood types, etc between the human and pig celluar material.
If they ended the experiment after only 32 cell divisions, I wonder what shape the embryo would have taken, given its genetic heritage and its porcine cell structure.
I’m sorry, I couldn’t view that “creation” (for lack of a better word) as alive, except in the strictest sense of the word. I’m sure it didnt’have soul or any form of awareness that would IMHO count it as human.
Could be, but then, why on earth would they call it pig DNA? Mitochondrial dna is completely different from dna for the animal itself. That being said, it just makes the thing seem all the more sensational. The only problem I can think of with having pig mitochondria is that possibly due to pigs having shorter lifespans, pig mitochondria might degrade faster then human mitochondria (apparently mitochondria degrade with a person’s age, over repeated replications)
How short is a pig’s gestation? Could it have just been premature? In any case, I think the point is that it wouldn’t have been non-viable in either. It probably would have been quite viable in a human mother.
Don’t mitochondria just turn sugar into ATP? It’s been sooo many years since we covered Kreb’s cycle.
The only thing I’d be worried about is a human with the lifespan of a pig…
I’m not a genetecist or a biologist (yet), so I’m afraid to add too much else without having the proper knowledge. But I’m enjoying reading all your responses.
I’ve been hearing from a lot of you out there that it is possible that neither a human or pig mother would be viable to support the embryo–but who needs a womb at all? Is it possible that they could support the embryo in laboratory conditions until it was developed enough to feed intravenously?
I don’t really have any religious qualms about experiments like these. I think it’d be pretty damn cool to start making some wicked human hybrids if it were viable given the development of the technology and the ethical support of the community.
It’s too bad that genetic experiments usually only apply to the newly born. That is–unless the advent of Gene Therapy provides otherwise. Which brings another question to mind–is it true? Can Gene Therapy supposedly change somebody’s genetic code while they are still living? I’ve heard stories about the possibility of gene therapy being used to circumvent those naughty genes that cause predisposition to cancer and family-related illnesses!
Why pig of all things? They needed to make a human race that can detect truffles easily?
The scary part in the article is not what these labs told the press, but what they haven’t told them. I’m willing to bet my last dollar that there’s some animal-man feutos floating around in a jar somewhere out there.
Gene therapy is currently uses retroviruses to insert code into fully developed humans (according to my layman’s knowledge). This doesn’t affect all your cells, only a few in one area and while this allows you to produce things you didn’t have before, it doesn’t eliminate nasty effects in your genes at the moment although it may compensate for them.
I’ve always thought it rather bizaare that trees have chlorophylls to convert CO[sub]2[/sub]+H[sub]2[/sub]O+energy into C[sub]6[/sub]H[sub]12[/sub]O[sub]6[/sub] and mitochondria to do the exact opposite. Granted, it’s nice to have some sugar when you’re short on sun, but why not just have a specialized organelle to convert ADP plus a phosphate and a little sun into ATP? Then you could just have extra ATP lying around to tide you through the night. After all, plants have slow metabolisms… Granted, some plants have to go a lot longer then a few hours without significant sunlight but still, wouldn’t it be sufficiently efficient for at least a few plants to have evolved it?
The “human with the metabolism of a pig” thing was just a joke actually.
But if the 3% pig genes are trivial, then is this not just a way to study human cloning without breaking the law? Yeah, why pigs??
Ashtar, Bareedy, nobody has brought any creature (well any creature that gestates in a womb of course) to term outside of the womb. Wombs are more complicated than they look.
The mitochondrion only contains 20 odd genes. These are not trivial genes. There are known mitochondrial diseases, usually affecting nervous system or muscle. This is the first reason that I believe this thing wouldn’t be viable.
Another reason is due to egg-coat proteins. In order for implantation in the uterus, the egg needs to have specific coat proteins on its surface so it can adhere. In the pig-man, you will have half (from the mother, who made the egg) and half (from the embryo, who is transcribing genes which make its way to the surface). So, if you use a pig womb, you will have to worry about the embryonic proteins not working, and vice versa.
The last reason is that the entire cytoplasmic machinery – besides mitochondria – are all pig. That means microtubules and spindles, actin, lysosomes, liposomes, peroxisomes, endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi apparatus, etc are all from the pig. The human embryo begins to express its proteins after fertilization. The first few cell divisions depend almost entirely on maternal machinery – that is why it probably could make it through 5 divisions to 32 cells. In the first few cell divisions, the egg does not grow in size at all, only surface area. Maybe this is because only maternal proteins are required. I think that when newly made embryonic proteins (human) start interacting with the pig ones, things will stop working. And if you have implanted into a pig womb, then the human proteins in the cytotrophoblast and syncytiotrophoblast are very different from pigs and probably will not be able to correctly interact with the maternal blood supply. Did some reading on that once…
Granted, pig and human are relatively close evolutionarily, but still, I think there are enough differences to halt the process…
I remember Dr. Edell talking about it on his radio show many months ago and he did say he put the story on HealthCentral.
He always says that but doesn’t always do it, but I think I found the story: http://www.healthcentral.com/drdean/deanfulltexttopics.cfm?id=9928
But I’m enjoying reading all your responses.