Feltman, Rachel. "Genetically engineered pig hearts survived more than a year in baboon hosts." Washington Post 19 Aug. 2014. Science in Context. Web. 11 Jan. 2015.
Researchers at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute have been breeding piglets with some human genes to be able to put them into primates. The goal was that if that went well, then they could be used in human heart transplants. The hearts were not used as hearts,instead just inserted into healthy baboons. To do this the NHLBI had to prevent certain enzyme production which lead to organ rejection. There are was also a problem with blood clotting, so there had to be made some gene alterations to fix that. One group had human thrombomodulin gene added to their genomes, which prevented blood clotting. The hearts in other groups survived an average of 70 days and the average for the thrombomodulin gene group was 200 days, however the majority of the grafts in the group survived 200-500 days, so more than a year. Since the NHLBI has been able to ensure that they can survive in the baboon, the next step is to do a heart transplant with that of a baboon, and see if it is able to support it.
This article relates to our last unit of molecular genetics because it talks about genetic engineering, and modification. It says how they had to put in certain genes to prevent problems or make gene alterations to fix problems. It also talks about how it was inserted into their genomes, which was another topic we discussed in class in unit 5.
Why were the hearts placed into baboons and not chimpanzees?
ReplyDeleteI couldn't find a good answer, but it might be because baboons have a more similar immune system to humans, and also the chimps bodies might reject the pig hearts.
DeleteWhat about the human throbomodulin stopped the blood from clotting?
ReplyDeleteIt converts thrombin into an anti clotting enzyme by a procoagulant enzyme which will stop the blood clotting when added to the pig's genomes.
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