The team, from the University of Newcastle, would take a cow’s egg and remove the nucleus. They would then replace it with the nucleus of a cell taken from an adult human, such as a skin cell.
The hybrid would be overwhelmingly human — 99.9 per cent, according to the team, led by Lyle Armstrong, of the North East England Stem Cell Institute. The other 0.1 per cent would be animal.
The embryo would then be allowed to divide for six days, when the team would try to extract stem cells, which have many potential applications in medicine. The hybrid embryo would be destroyed, as all research embryos are, at 14 days.
I'm not sure how it can be 99.9% human and .1% cow. Most of the genetic info should be from the cow and not the human cell.
Oh, I get it now. When I first read the quote, I thought they were doing this because the hybridization itself somehow afforded an advantage in research or medicine. No, it's just a new way to tapdance around the pro-life folks.
Way to go. Appease the pro-life movement only to stir up "Island of Dr. Moreau" paranoid fantasies. Dumbasses.
Post by Outback Frito Pendejo on Nov 7, 2006 16:04:05 GMT -5
sergeial said:
I'm not sure why it wouldn't be 100% human, genetically. All of the genetic information is in the nucleus.
I suspect they are referring to the mitochondrial DNA, which probably wouldn't have too much impact if this is only done to get stem cells. Hopefully they won't produce kids who don't need a mask to be a Tauren for Halloween.
Yeah, I know this place pretty good. I went to law school here.[My5:]