...........just a image of the future, showing the decision of UK to allow hybride embryon's? aka, to mix human gene's with animal ones.
Or just fun?
Anyway, have a
look here.
Michael,
We are hybrid anyway! That's how we work. It's nothing new. All cells share the same basic DNA code give or take presence or absence of variations in particular genes and adaptations. We are actually just one DNA organism: life.
Although people might not realize it, DNA is not merely exchanged in mating, it is also transmitted by viruses and infectious DNA strands. Mutations occur in all DNA and that variablity is how we have been able to adapt to every nook and cranny on the planet from the highest mountains, hot humid jungles to the superhot vents in the depths of the oceans.
All cells contain captured bacteria, now so much part of our cells that they cannot exist independantly.
Without these inner cells, for example, mitochondria, we could not even burn sugar for energy. Plants similarly captured green algae and so are able to trap the energy of sunlight in a complex of plain water and carbon our exhaled carbon dioxide to build sugar, which we in turn eat!
It is only lack of knowledge and delusions of being so special that creates sthe idea that humanit is somehow static and separate from other parts of life. Every day we are subject to virus, the taxis of DNA which hop from birds through mosquitoes and ticks and flied to man and back!
This trade had been going on for eons.
No one is contemplating making any viable embryo of a human with an animal gene, although I see no moral issue in providing a diabetic the genes for curing the disease if that becomes possible.
We have already made chimeras of mice with cells from different embryos and that has taught us a lot. I see doing careful controlled studies in responsible research settings as serious and worthy. We now have the human genome mapped and can look at individual genes of almost the same sequences in a series of animals. Suprisingly the "fat gene" discovered decades ago in fruit flies (yes there are obese fruit flies, LOL) are also present in mice and in man. Under-expression, even one bad gene copy, leads to fat accumulation and diabetes in the mice! What disease the poor fruit flies get I don't know, but for sure they aren't giving themselves insulin every day!
Having found genes, we need to know the steps by which they work and the sequence and detail of molecular switches, the cascade of conditions and induced activations that need to occur to make things actually work as "designed"!
"Designed"; you like that word? Hmm!
Is it fun doing that work? For sure! I'd imagine it's fun to unlock a safe with the Crown Jewels too, one of my unmet ambitions!
Science is fun, as one is playing a big mind game against the problem which seems to be devious, giving up false clues or ones competitors, vying for the best graduate students, funding and most prestigious journal placement for their work.
On the whole the biological scientists are good and moral people and responsible.
Still, Michael, it's our job as a society to know what's going on and the implications.
Asher
