Cloning Yields Human-Rabbit Hybrid Embryo 655
ralphb writes "Here is the story of scientists in China who have, for the first time, used cloning techniques to create hybrid embryos that contain a mix of DNA from both humans and rabbits. Hop on over for a look!"
Not really a mutant (Score:5, Informative)
Well, not exactly. The cell DNA was human. Only the mitochondrial DNA was from rabbit.
Sorry, no Rabbit People (Score:5, Informative)
The DNA that they put into the human cells is not DNA which determines physical charateristics. It's mitochondrial DNA, which is found in the cells' mitochondria. These little organelles of the cell basically burn sugar to make energy usable for the rest of the cell. There is a lot of evidence suggesting that the mitochondria found in all human cells was actually a seperate organism that became co-dependent with the cells in which they lived. Interstingly enough, mitochondiral is almost totally unaltered with a new generation, and is always passed down through the female of the species because the sperm cells typically have very few or a negligible amount of mitochondria. i.e. You have the same mitochondrial DNA as your mother and all your siblings, and she has all the same as her mother and so on down your family tree.
Re:We all should have seen this coming... (Score:2, Informative)
Although scientists in Massachusetts had previously mixed human cells and cow eggs in a similar attempt to make hybrid embryos as a source of stem cells, those experiments were not successful.
Secondly, this was done to produce stem cells and not out of morbid curiosity. Please, I know this is
Can I ask a question? (Score:1, Informative)
The DNA of the Rabbit cell was removed and replaced with DNA from five human cell sources. Note that the Rabbit and Human DNA was not fused or merged; it was Human DNA in a Rabit cell (You know how cells work; right?) Those cells were then cultivated, resulting in 400 individual cells. Out of those 400 cells, 100 of them survived to the point where they began to produce stem cells. The cluster of cells were then destroyed.
No Rabbit/Human hybrid, no little furry baby monsters, no little baby embreyos sucking its fur covered thumb. You're safe, don't panic.
Re:Not really a mutant (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Sorry, no Rabbit People (Score:1, Informative)
The relationship that mitochondria have with animal cells is similar to that cloroplasts have with plant cells. Both seem to have originally evolved as simple energy-producing specialist prokaryotes, that at some point became co-dependent on eukaroytic (or perhaps simply larger) cells for a benign environment in which to exist.
Re:This is just the sort of thing... (Score:3, Informative)
You're still using human DNA -- probably the whole human nucleus in a cell that is allowed to become a fetus. The major difference between all animal embryos is the DNA of the nucleus, so essentially you have a human embryo w/ mitochondria that are unique from other humans. Mitochondrial DNA changes slowly as it is passed from mother to children & all mammals have a common ancester, so the mitochondria isn't radically different genetically from ours, nor does it change the function of the mitochondria themselves to any noticable degree.
It's possible that embryos braught to full term could produce normal looking humans -- if the cloning process for primates even worked. There seem to be problems with human cloning that are even more complex than cloning with other animals
The religious right will stomp their feet and shout that these living things are "human" b/c they have human DNA & that "playing God" with living things with human DNA is wrong & try to shut this down. Many Republican senators (even the president) bow to these religious wackos & would try to stop this research if they could.
Having said that, I usually vote Republican, though I consider myself a moderate... if it weren't for the Democrat's stupid fiscal and monetary policies, I'd vote for them ;-) But, I digress.
Re:This is disgusting (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Island of Dr. Moreau (Score:3, Informative)
viable organism = vary, select, multiply, repeat (Score:1, Informative)
Menghele (yeah, him!) got an overunity success cloning cattle on his ranch in Argentina, in the 50's. Peron was a guest there, once, and got the grand tour. Didi it with techniques like those employed by scientists thirty years later, when the rest of the world "caught up", and science mags started talking about it.
He just made hundreds of copies and, on the average, 1.x survived. Net result, his ranch had a breeding productivity 1.x greater than the best of the rest.
Concentrate on variety and number and replication, until sufficiently viable lines come along. Grunt work for the huddled juniors, assistants...
There can be lots of more sophisticated approaches. But this bludgeon-technique still works.
Not a mutant at all, very important though (Score:4, Informative)
Why is this important ? Well, because the ability to make valid human stem-cells from animal egg cells would remove one of the most troubling objections to human stem cell research : right now, the only valid egg cells for human cloning are human eggs - aka ovules. These must be obtained from real women, which leads to technical and ethical problems (I know that in the US selling ovules is already common practice but in Europe things are quite different). At any rate, a woman can only produce one egg per month, so this is a poorly productive method.
(The other solution for obtaining stem cells is to suppress the cloning phase and to directly take existing human stem cells out of embryos - there again, moral problems arise if commercial forces are ever allowed in this game).
Making human stem cells with animal eggs suppress most of these problems. The only big problem that remains is simply that so far, it didn't work. Now these people claim that they have made "mostly human" stem cells with rabbit eggs, but will they have the same capacitie as purely human stem cells ? Could the mitochondrial (rabbit) DNA interfere with the functioning of the cell ? These are the important questions now. According to this article, the paper seems to address none of them.
Thomas Miconi
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Re:God, I've seen a lot of crap movies.... (Score:3, Informative)
A human embryo and a human mother are the same species. Therefore, by definition, the human embryo is NOT a parasite.
You've obviously never met my sister-in-law. Anyway, back to my point:
Dictionary.com defines parasite as: An organism that grows, feeds, and is sheltered on or in a different organism while contributing nothing to the survival of its host.
It says nothing about differing species, only different organisms. By the above definition, a fetus is a perfect example.
Ultimately, the parasite argument is inconsequential. The issue at hand is still whether or not a fetus counts as a human, and the answer to that isn't scientific, it's theological - which makes it good fodder for debate, but not as a basis for advancing or hindering scientific research. Just like the RIAA's supposed 'potential income', you can't quantify 'potential humanity'.
-72
Re:God, I've seen a lot of crap movies.... (Score:3, Informative)
This philosophically no different than Hilter's Final Solution. To maintain otherwise commits the logical fallacy of the Paradigm.