For the first time, an embryo has been successfully created, half a half pig

Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California, USA, stated: They have just had the first success in creating a creature that is half human and half pig. By injecting human stem cells into the embryonic pig embryo in early stages, a "chimera" creature has begun to form.

Named after a three-headed beast hybrid between the death, goat and snake in Greek mythology, the term chimera is used by scientists to refer to entities mixed and hybridized between two creatures of the same species but different from DNA. , or different species together as in the case of people and pigs.

Over the past decade, since advances in the field of stem cell biology allow humans to create chimera, it has caused a lot of moral and legal controversy.

Therefore, chimera chimeras between humans and pigs at the Salk Institute are not allowed to complete the entire fetal stage to form organisms. Scientists have actively destroyed their results, a move that is judged to be "responsible".

In case that doesn't happen, you will likely be witnessing an entity born to you pigs, but inside are human organs, including the heart, lungs, liver . and even the brain cell. It will open us up a lot of trouble.

Pig and pigeon embryos in the last week, before being destroyed.

Biochemist Hank Greely of Stanford University says: The creation of this hybrid hybrid chimera is a smear of human dignity, blurring the line between humans and other lower organisms. . What if an animal has enough human brain cells to think and feel like a human? It must be a depressed soul, in the body of a pig or a monkey.

Imagine a future when our children and grandchildren must distinguish a human being or a pig. And how will we treat them properly? Pigs have historically been considered a low-level creature and a source of human food.

The US Congress is considering a draft law prohibiting chimera research, with penalties of up to $ 1 million and 10 years in prison. The US National Institutes of Health has also stated never to sponsor any of these studies, and to promote strict surveillance with trials of transplanting human stem cells into animal embryos.

Even so, while the official ban has not yet been issued, these hot field trials are still ongoing, with private funding sources. The purpose of the researchers is also quite reasonable. They say that chimera can develop human organs, increasing supply for transplant surgeries.

Currently, in the United States alone, about 120,000 people are waiting in line for the list of organs to be donated. Every day, 20 of them will die before their turn into the operating room.

Hybrid chimera creatures can also be used to test drugs. For example, human lungs in a pig will produce more authentic cystic fibrosis test results, than any other current animal test.

Green human cells in embryo chimera.

In a scientific paper published in Cell magazine, scientists at the Salk Institute announced they injected human stem cells into a series of new pig embryos a few days old. Later, more than 2,000 embryos were transferred into the body of the mother pig to develop. 150 of them turn into chimera creatures. These organisms have the predominant form of pigs, with about 1 human cell per 10,000 pig cells.

28 days is the maximum time the chimera embryos are allowed to grow. In comparison, the gestation period in pigs lasts a total of 112 days. Then, the chimera embryo is actively destroyed."This is enough time for us to try to understand what it would be like to try to understand when human and pig cells mixed together, and not cause moral worries about true adult chimera creatures , " Izpisua Belmonte , said the team leader at the Salk Institute.

From the University of Minnesota, Professor Daniel Garry, who led a different chimeric research project, said : "This is a significant step, it will open up great new opportunities, but will come with both problems. moral threads ". Fortunately, the Salk Institute conducted research in a "responsible approach" way.

In fact, the first chimera creatures were created 10 years ago. But until now, new embryos between humans and pigs are for the first time, scientists can combine two species of mammals in the same hybrid.

Professor Bruce Whitelaw, director of the Roslin University Eddiburgh University, where Dolly sheep was created explains: "The 10 years between these two studies are a demonstration of how difficult it is to create a chimera between humans and pigs." . The two species have a very long distance from each other. The common ancestor between humans and pigs lived on Earth about 96 million years ago.

Another major challenge is the gap between pregnancy between people and pigs. The pigs are only 112 days pregnant compared to 9 months in humans. That means embryonic cells grow at different speeds.

Professor Izpisua Belmonte said that his team had to keep an eye on the exact duration of injecting human stem cells into pig embryos. It's like you're getting into a highway, where cars are three times faster than your car. The key is to choose the right time, otherwise you will cause an accident.

Embryonic process of human embryos and pigs.

Again, in an accident, in a chimera study aimed at organ harvesting, an accident occurs when human stem cells develop into nerve cells. For example, pigs will have human brain and intelligence.

But in his study, Izpisua Belmonte said: "We do not see any human cells at the brain regions of the embryo, but we cannot rule out the possibility that they have and will go to the brain."

In the future, to prevent such a case of "accident" , the team plans to use genetic modification tools to stop human cells from participating in the process of forming brain organisms. At the same time, towards the use of organs, they can also "turn off" certain genes in pig embryos, to allow them to form organs with a higher percentage of human cells.

That will be a positive direction for the research field chimera in particular, when gene editing technologies such as CRISPR-Cas9 are very developed today. But anyway, many accidents can happen unexpectedly. Therefore, in this sensitive field of research, scientists still need to be very careful and responsible.