A reader has asked me to comment on this interesting and controversial technique for generating stem cells. Investigators in the UK are requesting permission to do this:
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Collect ova from cows. This is routine, done-all-the-time stuff. The cows can't complain.
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Extract the nuclei from the eggs and throw them away, so that all you have is a lovely membrane-bound sack of cytoplasm and other organelles. People who eat hamburgers don't get to complain about destroying potential life, so this is OK, too.
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Extract nuclei from human cells and throw the cytoplasm away. These can be taken from non-reproductive tissues—epithelia, for instance, or some blood cells. This is not controversial either—you throw away human cells and nuclei every time you sneeze or brush your hair.
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You can see where this is going, can't you? Combine the cow cytoplasm from step 2 with the human nuclei from step 3, and by various finagling (and this part is actually the hardest step) reset the nucleus to a state which allows further development. Let the cell develop into a blastocyst, from which you can harvest stem cells for research. (Promise not to let it develop any further than that, though.)
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Watch fundamentalists die of apoplexy. (This might be the most morally dicey part of the experiment.)
Now I'm asked what I think of this whole procedure. I can answer with one word:
COOL!
After considering the ethics of this experiment and the consequences of the work if it panned out (really, step 4 is hard, with a low probability of success, although I also think that a lot of work will eventually make it possible), I have a more nuanced and thorough response: we are ethically, morally, and scientifically required to carry out this research and make it work.
There are good reasons for supporting it. One is on general principles: I think scientists are obligated to push hard at the frontiers of knowledge, and that sometimes means edging way past what Joe Sixpack finds comfortable. If we were to start curbing ourselves, the bioethicists would have nothing to do, after all—a good debate has to have someone pushing and someone pulling, and if both are pulling back, it's no fun at all.
Another is that I think it highlights beautifully the silliness of the Sacred Zygote position. When we can make human embryos from a white blood cell extracted from a popped pimple, the whole "but it's a potential life" argument acquires a new and interesting dimension, don't you think? I'm all for making the sanctimonious apologists for Soul Magic bleat.
In fact, I want to go further than these scientists propose.
Don't terminate the experiment after a few days when you've got healthy, growing blastocysts. Slip the best looking ones back into the cow. Work out methods for gestating them in a non-human mammal.
I want to be there nine months later when the vet reaches into the cow's vagina and pulls out a slick, slimy, healthy human infant.
I want to see the Pope's head explode when he sees it. I want David Cronenberg there with a camera, cackling happily.
I want the researchers to announce in a press conference afterwards that their successful experiment was funded by the Department of Defense, Sony, the Church of Scientology, and a private donor.
I want that private donor to be Paris Hilton, who, on accepting her cooing new clone baby, declares that she just didn't want to go through that icky pregnancy and labor stuff. "It isn't haaawt," she'd say.
I want 100 million women to sit up and say, "What? I could outsource the nausea and bloating and pain and stretch marks and episiotomy to a cow? Sign me up!"
I want the phrase "family farm" to acquire rich new meanings. I want to see Bible Belt politicians lobbying for new fetus farming subsidies.
I want gay men to rejoice, and become the primary market for this procedure.
I want to hear snooty young bluebloods declare cows déclassé, and that they'd had their little Brittany gestated in a Kentucky thoroughbred.
I want the cow to be led away by its owners, ranchers under contract to the McDonald's corporation. I want it rendered down into 10,000 perfect all-meat patties and distributed randomly throughout the country.
I want Rush Limbaugh to break the news over the radio that the womb mother of Paris Hilton's clone can be found in Big Macs. I want to see some redneck in a gimme cap at the drive up window try to digest that information as he's chewing ruminatively at his lunch. "Say whuut?" I think he'd say. I want him to keep on eating.
When all this comes to pass, then I'll be content. We'll be ready to have a real discussion about the biotechnology. It will be fun and exciting.
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Best thing I've read in weeks. Thanks PZ!
Brilliant!
But you know how much e-mail you'll be getting for this one...
...and how many other bloggers are going to be posting about defending their feeling of 'yucky'...
Having a very bad afternoon at work but you've just pulled me back from the brink. Thanks :-)
Unfortunately, I can think of one other word to say about this: prion. Make sure the cows used as oocyte donors are beyond suspicion mad cow free or we'll end up with a huge mess. I'm also not ready for cloned human babies, but only because the animals so far cloned have had health problems and we clearly don't understand all that goes on with epigentic changes yet. Other than looking out for those technical glitches (which you always have to do with a new technology)...I don't see the problem.
Unfortunately, I can think of one other word to say about this: prion. Make sure the cows used as oocyte donors are beyond suspicion mad cow free or we'll end up with a huge mess. I'm also not ready for cloned human babies, but only because the animals so far cloned have had health problems and we clearly don't understand all that goes on with epigentic changes yet. Other than looking out for those technical glitches (which you always have to do with a new technology)...I don't see the problem.
Unfortunately, I can think of one other word to say about this: prion. Make sure the cows used as oocyte donors are beyond suspicion mad cow free or we'll end up with a huge mess. I'm also not ready for cloned human babies, but only because the animals so far cloned have had health problems and we clearly don't understand all that goes on with epigentic changes yet. Other than looking out for those technical glitches (which you always have to do with a new technology)...I don't see the problem.
Also, tag this one for the Koufaxes...
Unfortunately, I can think of one other word to say about this: prion. Make sure the cows used as oocyte donors are beyond suspicion mad cow free or we'll end up with a huge mess. I'm also not ready for cloned human babies, but only because the animals so far cloned have had health problems and we clearly don't understand all that goes on with epigentic changes yet. Other than looking out for those technical glitches (which you always have to do with a new technology)...I don't see the problem.
(Apologies if this turns out to be a repeat post. I'm having computer problems.)
Bovine mitochondria and a human nucleus? I'm not aware that that would be a problem, but I wouldn't bet against it.
Of course we could transplant a few engineered human mitochondria into the cow egg and then select against the bovine mitochondria... Oohh! Better yet, we could genetically engineer a cow with human mitochondria.
Of course, the big groups who are against stem cell research are already against this sort of animal-human hybrid. But wouldn't it be interesting if we transferred the cow nucleus into the human cell at the same time we transferred the human nucleus into the cow cell? Then we could play a version of three-card-monty:
"Where's the soul now?"
I dunno... the idea has been around for a long time, but it seems pretty risky to me. (For starters, it sounds like it would be harder than a regular somatic-cell clone!) Besides the technical obstacles (and the size issue) there's all those endogenous retroviruses and who-knows what else. Admittedly, making the Pope's head explode would be cool, but there's gotta be an easier way. (No, firearms and such are just cheating!)
Good FSM! My post suddenly appeared four times! NOt sure how it happened. Deepest apologies to all for the repetativeness.
Incidently, did Bush ever do anything on the "no human-animal hybrids" proposal or did his advisors explain to him just how stupid that was?
I've read about this technique before, and from what I gather, it works. The enucleated egg provides the mitochondria and a fore-to-aft and top-to-bottom chemical gradient, and those two things have not changed terribly much, despite quite a bit of evolution.
The conditions of the egg seem to 'reset' adult nuclei someone, although I don't think it lengthens the telomeres (the gene equivalent of the plastic aglets on the end of your shoelaces). Mind you, we actually know what telomerase consists of; one of the experiments to run ought to be to try to re-lengthen them. The adult nuclei also have accrued quite a few mutations already.
I think I was reading about it in Michael D West's The Immortal Cell, but I could have my source wrong.
Hawt idea! This could also lead to an actual positive use for a creationist preacher! - Isn't that right, Pastor Ted? He could help with the sperm harvesting!
Well the only way you could get a cow to carry a human fetus to term is if you were to replace the inner cell mass of a bovine blastocyst with that of a human one, so that you would get a human fetus inside a bovine placenta. A mere nuclear transfer simply won't do. Technically, this could probably be done.
But all joking aside, I think there might be serious problems arising from a potential for mitochondrial/nuclear incompatibility. I.e. it is not clear that human nuclear gene products will be able to function properly inside of bovine mitochondria. Nor is it clear whether a bovine oocyte could actually reprogram a human nucleus. MAny uncertainties. But I agree, it is worth pursuing, although I doubt it will pacify the religious opposition to this type of work..
PZ,
This is my first comment on your blog, which I really like. I'm a biologist from Brazil beginning my PhD in bioinformatics, but I'm very fond of comparative embryology and developmental biology. So here is a question: Don't you think that, if it could be possible to do that, the cytoplasmic structure of the egg (like protein gradients, multi stable cycles of biochemical reactions and other ('broad sense') epigenetic factors) would make the 'baby' (if it survives)... How do I put that?... not completely human? I'm really interested in the scientific aspect of this idea, but I agree that would be really awesome, mind blowing etc!!!
Best wishes,
How quickly we forget... It wasn't that long ago that scientists complained that current human embryonic stem cell lines eligible for federal funding were hopelessly contaminated because they had been grown with mouse embryonic feeder cells. Yet, today PZ is gah-gah over embryonic stem cells grown from actual cow-human hybrids!
At last, a human baby for whom cow's milk really would be the appropriate food! :D Formula manufacturers, rejoice!
My gawd that was brilliant... it's like the words that formed in my brain as I read that story just coalesced on the screen as I read your post. Happy dance time, people!
"Of course we could transplant a few engineered human mitochondria into the cow egg and then select against the bovine mitochondria... "
During bovine oocyte maturation the number of mitochondria reaches somewhere into the 100,000 (see ref below). How exactly would you replace those with a "few engineered human mitochiondria" ?
For a review, see: AM Tarazona et al. 2006. Mitochondrial activity, distribiution, and segregation in bovine oocytes and embryos produced in vitro. Reprod Dom Anim 41:5-11.
I'm just waiting for a anti-reality based community person (read: religious zealot) to start quote mining this nice humorous piece and turning Prof. Myers into the new Antichrist.
Excellent post. You could do all this research in the great lakes; The Island of Dr. Myers. Buwahaha!
(Also, Paris' baby could unironically call her mother a cow.)
"Cool", yes, but isn't it easier to clone the little fuckers without all the cow stuff? Perhaps I'm wrong--maybe it's equally difficult--but when the only path to the other side of knowledge is a tightrope, I hate to make scientists cross it while juggling cats on a unicycle, when they could just walk across instead. Why appease the nutjobs at all?
"Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men? "Not to suck up Drink; that is the Law. Are we not Men? "Not to eat Fish or Flesh; that is the Law. Are we not Men? "Not to claw the Bark of Trees; that is the Law. Are we not Men? "Not to chase other Men; that is the Law. Are we not Men?"
Splice in a few cephelopod genes for good measure. Time for evolution to change course. Cthulhu be praised.
Yes. Yes! YESSSSSS!
Oh, and don't give the fundies any SOMA.
Are you insane! Supporting the development of COWPEOPLE!
It finally comes out PZ you are a Transhumanist!
www.transhumanism.org
I hope the election today will render this line of research redundant (still useful). If the dems can get enough seats to work the repugs for a veto proof majority on ESC research I will be happy.
Personally, I'd like to see human DNA combined in a feline egg to provide cat mitochondria. Then we'd see people jumping to the top of refrigerators. Symbiogenesis indeed.
I think H.G. Wells wrote about something like this in the late 1800's. I have no issues with the procedure but if your going to do it why not a tiger, gorilla or some other bad ass mammal. Personally, I would love to hear the collective "Scanner" style pops of the pope and all of his cronies.
I want the phrase "family farm" to acquire rich new meanings
Hahahahahahahahaha!
My first reaction to this idea wasn't political or ideological. I'd be very surprised if all that bovine mitochondria and maternal RNA would go very well with a human nucleus.
It's probably a moot (mooed?) point anyhow, since the Pope and the rest don't want their heads to explode and may well succeed in supressing the experiment. Not every question is technical. For example, I'm told that the doctors are ready to perform the first head transplant; but they can't decide whose insurance will pay for it.
We are Devo!
Good evening my dear, you look delicious tonight...
Honestly, wouldn't the fundies want their parishoners to be more like cattle?
The old show Picket Fences imagined a similar possibility in the mid-nineties. They just didn't use a clone, but simply implanted a blastocyst or embryo (I can't remember which.)
Well, that should provide the fundies with a quote-mining festival. I have to admit, I do find the idea of gestating a human fetus in a cow's uterus rather disturbing myself. Not that I'd severely freak out if someone went and did it, though.
"but if your going to do it why not a tiger, gorilla or some other bad ass mammal"
Supply my friend. Where would you get all those thousands of eggs from you need to develop the technique ?? Not from any endangered species, I can assure you.
Cow eggs ? No problemo. A good afternoon in any midsize slaughterhouse will yield hundreds of eggs....
The War on Christmas reaches Britain
OK, here's the funny part:
Oxymoron, anyone?
Wow! This is thinking ahead! Another shortage will be averted!
Consider what is happening: World populations are mixing so that racial epithets begin to mean less as mixed race family origins become the norm, nationalism is dwindling as economic trading blocs reduce the importance of the boundaries of abutting nations and permit locals to live on either side of the border without a lot of patriotic baggage, languages meet and mingle to produce common slanguages or settle on one tongue as everyone's second language, and the "no religion" choice is becoming more frequent on census forms indicating, perhaps, that it won't matter if I just "am" while you aim at better eternal things.
We're going to run out of things to be bigots about. No more racial, national, or religious epithets that mean anything! Nothing to put anyone down over.
Now tho' we can reassert our right to insult. Just roll "Filthy cow-born!" around in your mouth a bit. Take "Ewe-mothered idiot!" for a spin. Even "Never can trust a pig-hosted." works.
Crisis averted.
Umilik,
Something like this:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&li…
Basically choose a cow whose mitochondria are susceptible to an antibiotic like chloramphenicol, choose human mitochondria that are resistant to chloramphenicol, or genetically engineer them, add anti-biotic resistant human mitochondria to susceptible bovine cells, place cells on anti-biotic media, test for homoplasmy,...
Voila! "Bovine" cells with human mitochondria, and of course the human nucleus which was the point of the whole thing.
I'd be curious to know what PZ's wife thinks of this. My first thought was, 'that's disturbing'. Then I wondered about exactly why it's disturbing. Not sure. But the presence of David Cronenburg at least confirms that it is disturbing.
I do not have any moral problem with run of the mill Human Embryonic Stem cell research. This seems to be just the type of round about nonsense that someone thinks up to placate the fantasy lovers. On the other hand I have no problem with this as a form of research. The fact is that it will just add to the years of research needed to develop viable methodologies the can be used. We have no need to be subborned by the ignorant and their Opinioned beliefs. I think we need to be directly involved in human embryonic stem cell researh.
Yes, I'm being glib: same-species nuclear transfer experiments have a less than 1% success rate, there's the worry about mitochondrial incompatibilities, and implantation is probably not going to work without some extreme tinkering. I just love the idea of taking two procedures without any ethical problems -- cow ova + human somatic nuclei -- and combining them into an amazing new dilemma.
On a lighter note. Do you think they'll work on a cure for Apoplexy? And if so will the righteous accept the cure?
What makes this especially trippy is that it seems plausible to this layman.
Someone might want to explain the physics and neurology behind the Pope's head exploding, though. It's not that I doubt it, but it does seem to have a stretch or two.
Congratulations, PZ, you are about to be subject to the first ever fatwah issued by the Christian religion. :-)
I'm ashamed to admit...I can't quite tell where the seriousness ends and the snark begins.
It does sound like a legitamitely interesting subject to study, but isn't pushing it as a replacement for 100% human embryonic stem cells still just giving in to the fundies? I mean it sounds like an expensive, difficult, uncertain replacement for something that <> be an issue because the only objections are religious. It's like saying we don't need embryonic stem cells anymore because I heard somewhere that adult stem cells might be just as effective.
And the cow giving birth to a human?!?! I'm no biologist, but it can't be that easy.
And I can't even spell "fatwa".
Oops... That greater than sign was supposed to say "shouldn't". I'm also no HTML expert :-).
You missed:
I want to see the look in the geneticist's eyes 10,000 years from now when she tries to figure out the subject's racial grouping from mitochondrial DNA.
I draw your attention to Ekklesia, another UK-based think tank which recently joined up with the National Humanist Association to oppose creationism in schools.
Obviously I think their religion itself is silly, but you can't fault them as a group.
Why the Scientologists? They're only into primitive voltmeter technology. It's the Raelians that are into biotech. Of course, the downside of the Raelians is that even if the experiment fails, they'll claim that it worked (as they did when they "cloned" a human).
Just for those who are wondering how feasible this all is: it's all possible, but it's also all very hard, with lots of technical hurdles along the way. It would be a thousand times easier just to use human material throughout.
I want to see the Pope's head explode as well. Especially when the human race welcomes its new Minotaur overlords. ;)
This could become very popular in india where the cow is sacred.
Reminds me of that Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror Halloween episode wherein their family doctor, Dr. Hibbert,has gone mad, moved to an island, and is conducting human animal hybridization a la Dr. Moreau. Homer happens upon his neighbor, Ned Flanders, who, as a half man, half cow, begs him to be milked...
ROFL! I loved how the redneck was ruminating over his ruminant lunch. I nearly choked on my Doritos.
But, seriously, what is amoral about letting fundies die of apoplexy?
Aw, PZ, you got me all worked up for nothing? I was seriously excited. The cultural implications alone--be still, my little sociological heart!
Okay, cue music...
Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be Cow Boys...
My proposal would be to use sheep for the donor uterus in certain areas of the country[Montana, Wyoming?]. Given certain human taboos, the flock will rest easier at night.
Dogscratcher said: "Personally, I'd like to see human DNA combined in a feline egg to provide cat mitochondria. Then we'd see people jumping to the top of refrigerators. Symbiogenesis indeed."
Or sleeping all day on top of the aquarium ;^)
Lynn
Holy cow--manimals!
Pharma Bawd: can't quite access the reference other than its title, but I noted it's nearly 25 years old. In any case, the tricky part is that you are not dealing with bovine tissue culture cells, but OOCYTES which have a very limited lifespan, perhaps 24 hours in which you have to ensure they're maturing properly (they are retrieved from ovaries from the slaughterhouse mostly in an immature state) , a process that is very sensitive to any perturbations. You then have to subject the mature egg to removal of its nucleus or more precisely the metaphase plate, the subsequent fusion with a human cell (to transfer the nucleus), all of which is basically detrimental to its survival. Then on this process you are somehow superimposing the concomittant destruction of 100000 mitochondria and their replacement (how ?) with a few hundred human mitochondria ?
Oh yes, the cow with antibiotic-sensitive mitochondria. You don't need "a" cow, you'll need oocytes from hundreds of (presumably dead) cows to make this work.
I think the potential for mitochondrial/nuclear incompatibility is probably negligible. How much interspecific mitochondrial variation can there be given how central mitochondrial function is to the eukaryotic cell? More likely problems would arise with human morphogene expression not properly cueing a bovine developmental system.
Ian -- There is another, practical reason for trying the cow eggs--the supply of human eggs is very limited. Human females must undergo a long, tedious, physically disruptive series of procedures to donate eggs, and researchers are rarely allowed to compensate them with $$. There is a virtually unlimited supply of cow eggs available in slaughterhouses. So it really isn't about giving in to the fundies.
I just want to know if the child born from the cow's womb will have the power to talk to animals, be guarded by a flying eagle, have two ferrets as pets, look hot in a loin cloth, and eventually grow up to destroy Rip Torn?
Dar lives!
I think you're all missing the best possible use of this technology:
Sharktopus!
I'm a little confused. I thought something like this had already been done. Additionally, there is a problem with the surface sugars and surface proteins on the cell (i.e. the cells will have surface proteins and sugars of cows, based on the cow's DNA, rather than having human surface proteins).
Read Zimmer for details on the Neu5Gc sugar:
http://scienceblogs.com/loom/2005/01/23/of_stem_cells_and_neanderthals…
Pluky: Here's what the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (COSEPUP)Board on Life Sciences (BLS)had to say about nuclear transfer within the SAME species:
When the SCNT procedure is used, the incoming nuclear DNA will encounter a foreign set of egg-derived mitochondrial DNA. That has the potential to cause problems because, for example, there are natural variants of both nuclear and mitochondrial genes, and some pair combinations work less efficiently than others.
Now you imagine that the incoming nucleus is from a different species....
I enjoyed the end of the article,
It reminds me of the oft cited logic of the Underpants Gnomes on South Park,
1. Collect underpants
2. ?
3. Profit!
Or in this case,
1. Mix animal eggs and human chromosomes
2. ?
3. Undermine human dignity and human rights!
Okay, cue music...
Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be Cow Boys...
AGH! Dew through my nose! It hurts! It hurts!
I can't get on board unless you make it manbearpig instead of mancow. You heathens.
Sharktopus rocks. Behold, the new lord of the sea.
Genotypical writes:
Human females must undergo a long, tedious, physically disruptive series of procedures to donate eggs, and researchers are rarely allowed to compensate them with $$.
Tens of thousands of women are undergoing these procedures in IVF clinics all over the world. There are oocyte donors for couples with female infertility and those women are indeed compensated. Since in this country there is no public funding for research on stem cells, paying women to sell their eggs for research isn't a big issue since there isn't a large demand for them. Most embryos that end up for this type of research in private companies are probably donated by couples who have extras, although it wouldn't surprise me in the least if couples are compensated since the cost of IVF procedures is quite substantial. In countries where ES cells can be generated, women are quite often paid for supplying their eggs.
I'd prefer a more equine animal.
"Did you know he's hung like a ...?"
Of course of course!
To me it is very important that we not engage in this kind of reproduction without a high degree of confidence that the result infant will have health potential comparable to that achieved with traditional reproduction.
Umilik,
"I noted it's nearly 25 years old."
= established technology.
"the tricky part is that you are not dealing with bovine tissue culture cells, but OOCYTES which have a very limited lifespan"
that's why I said:
"Oohh! Better yet, we could genetically engineer a cow with human mitochondria."
Of course, we'll have to tweak the nuclear genome of the cow to tolerate the human mitochondria but once we have a herd of "humanized" cattle we're off to the races! All the eggs you want, already containing human mitochondria.
"and their replacement (how ?) with a few hundred human mitochondria ?"
Mitochondrial replication? Really, as I noted above, transformation of mitochondria and chloroplasts are pretty well established technologies. At least compared to say: culturing embryonic stem cells from chimeric embryos. If cross-species mitochondrial transplants will survive (I'm not saying they will, my original comment was suggesting that this would be problematic.), it won't be that difficult to do the actual mitochondrial transplant and selection part.
"Oh yes, the cow with antibiotic-sensitive mitochondria. You don't need "a" cow, you'll need oocytes from hundreds of (presumably dead) cows to make this work."
Thus, the "humanized" cattle containing human mitochondria would seem to be the way to go here. Then it would be easier to just harvest oocytes without killing the cows.
Hmm, ok, according to the mDNA data, humans and cows are thought to have shared a common ancestor... What? Last week? Better re-run this analysis...
BC: you are correct it has been done. There were African wild cat kittens produced at the Audubon Center for Research on Endangered Species in New Orleans following transfer of wild cat cell nuclei into domestic cat oocytes. Similarly there was work done with transfer of gaur nuclei into domestic cow oocytes although the resulting calf died right after birth or was born dead, I can't quite recall. But these are transfers between relatively closely related species.
There is a lot of work done in this field in China, and scientists there have produced all sorts of embryos following heterospecific nuclear transfers, quite often using rabbit oocytes as recipients.
Tabloid headline the day after the announcement:
'Cow has a baby. Pope has a cow.'
...When we can make human embryos from a white blood cell extracted from a popped pimple, the whole "but it's a potential life" argument acquires a new and interesting dimension, don't you think?
Now you've done it. Tomorrow, watch for dozens of state legislatures to begin drafting laws requiring anyone under 17 to get parental consent before purchasing Clearasil.
Eeeevery pimple's sacred
Eeeevery pimple's great...
I'm pretty sure W's birth was filmed. It might even be in his library already.
Oh, you said healthy.
Oh, and human too.
Never mind.
You should take this act on the road, PZ.
Fertility and Sterility
Volume 80, Issue 6 , December 2003, Pages 1380-1387
Blastocyst formation, karyotype, and mitochondrial DNA of interspecies embryos derived from nuclear transfer of human cord fibroblasts into enucleated bovine oocytes
Kyung H. Chang M.S.a, Jeong M. Lim D.V.M., Ph.D., , a, Sung K. Kang D.V.M., Ph.D.b, Byeong C. Lee D.V.M., Ph.D.b, Shin Y. Moon M.D., Ph.D.c and Woo S. Hwang D.V.M., Ph.D.b
Pharma Bawd, my suspicion is that any technology that is 25 years old is mostly of interest to historians of science, but what I am really intrigued by is your statement:
" we'll have to tweak the nuclear genome of the cow to tolerate the human mitochondria but once we have a herd of "humanized" cattle we're off to the races"
That would necessitate the following:
A) an understanding of all of the factors involved in the co-operation between nucleus and mitochondria
B) we have identified ALL of those bovine genes that may prove incompatible with human mitochondrial function
C) the corresponding human genes "in hand" so that we might replace the bovine ones with their human counterparts
D) some kind of insight into whether the human genes will be controlled and expressed properly since their regulation will now depend on a bovine genetic environment
(transcription factors etc)
E) any method to actually "tweak" the bovine genome which may involve replacement of dozens of genes.
A tall order, indeed.
Admittedly, making the Pope's head explode would be cool, but there's gotta be an easier way. (No, firearms and such are just cheating!)
How about a communion wafer molded out of C4 plastic explosive?
I guess this will allow me to truthfully claim that some people are bovine.
What a fantasy! After this bit of whimsy, I've decided to make PZ the manager of my fantasy baseball team, as well. (For the record, 'The Darwin Finches' are 19 games out in my league and likely to finish in the second division, sigh)...SH
One other thing I would point out is that (I believe) this has been done with rabbit eggs and human nuclei already:
http://www.nature.com/cr/journal/v13/n4/full/7290170a.html
"Embryonic stem cells generated by nuclear transfer of human somatic nuclei into rabbit oocytes"
I like Pharma Bawd's suggestion of genetically engineering cows with human mitochondria. Might take a few tries, if there truly are mitochondria compatibility troubles, but I bet you could get something viable.
Just one problem: how 'ya gonna keep 'em with Paris once they've seen the farm?
While making the religious right collective heads explode in The Cheat-like fashion is a good goal, I am somewhat worried about developing new techniques to allow more births ...
"Pharma Bawd, my suspicion is that any technology that is 25 years old is mostly of interest to historians of science"
Yeah, I hear it's impossible to isolate plasmid DNA without one of those Quiagen kits these days too.
As for the rest, I think I indicated that I thought mitochondrial incompatibility could be an important barrier to making useful ES cells through chimeric embryos.
If it's not, then it probably wouldn't be that hard, (as in it would only take a decade of effort), to make cows with human mitochondria.
Unfortunately this walks right into the new tactic the fundies have taken. Take a look at how the opposition to stem cell research has played out in this election. "Blastocysts are CHILDREN" is the old, busted talking point. The new trick is to try to depict any use of stem cells as "cloning", which is apparently just as bad as baby-killing or whatever. Expect the people "morally" denouncing the use of experimentation on dumpster blastocysts today, to shift to denouncing this new tactic as soon as it becomes viable without missing a beat.
PharmaBawd: oh I remember isolating plasmid DNA without kits. Way back in my grad school days when we were huddling in our cold and dark lab caves trying to keep Igor away from the mammoth bones we were saving for lunch. Yep, those were the good old days when we were snacking on P35 and then would try to see who could get higher readings from the Geiger counter by holding the probe to our stomachs. Long before those bleeding heart wimps from the Nuke Patrol told us it wasn't good for us. .
Some say the President was born of a cow.
This is a very strong indicator that caution is needed, but let us not allow one unfortunate result dissuade us; someday we will produce children of normal intelligence via cow gestation.
Actually PZ, current cloned success rates from nuclear transfer in bovine runs around 5-10% and there is a possibility that we could get it up around 30%...
I would also be worried about mitochondrial incompatability but the biggest problem would be the trophoblast and placenta and incompatabilities with the bovine uterus. Fortunately that could probably be overcome by tetraploid rescue techniques which would give a "human" fetus with a bovine placenta.
Hmmm, I think I have some bovine oocytes next week, just enough time to derive and culture some lymphocyte or epithelial cells from myself. Would make an interesting side project...
I wanna be a cowboy, and you can be my cowgirl... Mwahahahaha!
"What? I could outsource the nausea and bloating and pain and stretch marks and episiotomy to a cow? Sign me up!"
hey! that actually should go over well with corporate america too!
after all, outsourcing has been all the rage for the last 10 years or so.
I was thinking more along the lines of, "I wanna be a cow boy, and you can be my cow girl." You'll have to provide a horse named Trigger, too, of course.
I'm not really in a position to evaluate the feasibility of this technology, but I wonder about the degree of social acceptance even apart from the exploding heads thing. The often gushy anecdotes I've read and heard from female acquaintances lead me to suspect that a sizable percentage of women would choose to carry their own babies even with this alternative; do the female commenters here have any input on that?
Well, I admit I found this disgusting but only because Paris Hilton was reproducing.
But it would be nice to see David Cronenberg get back to his lovely icky 80s roots. Maybe somehow they could engineer the TV from Videodrome.
Although in all seriousness I can think of another word to describe all this: Unneccessary. Its my understanding that a jillion blastocysts left over from IVF that eventually get disposed? Talk about wasting human life.
Lesse, saving living actual humans or pouring potential down the drain in order to satisfy our holier-than-thou needs to feel good about ourselves...which is better?
MYERS.
WON.
THE.
INTERNET.
This is the best post I have ever read on a blog.
In the words of Cartman, "SSWWEEEEETT"
Apikoros wrote: I want to see the look in the geneticist's eyes 10,000 years from now when she tries to figure out the subject's racial grouping from mitochondrial DNA.
What's the problem? I'm sure many of the major racial groups of today will still be traceable: Brahmins, Frisians, Holsteins, Texas longhorns, zebus... ;)
Didn't something like this happen on Crete 3500 years ago? Queen Pasiphae got horny with a bull, and had a Minotaur. Now that is some bad-ass animal!
PZ, although I disagree with you on one or two points here but...
BEST POST EVER :D
Very good. Thank you for this. I really think you should keep experimenting with this style of writing. Very cool.
HEY, wasn't this the plot to Beastmaster??
Just back off a little. It sounds as if it would be easier just to transfer a fertilized human egg to a cow and let the cow do the bearing; BUT, since we don't know which elements of the prenatal environment are necessary and which are trivial, doing so would amount to experimenting on future human beings who are not capable of consenting; therefore the experiment is unethical.
Uh, wouldn't the Sharktopus have a mouth at each end?
John Owen,
reminded me of reading the menu in a Chinese restaurant last spring... and our Chinese frined explaining to us that dishes such as "Cow boy stir-fry" referred to veal.
Between this post and the election, it's a happy day. Thank you. :)
Hey, I resemble that remark! I already said it elsewhere, but I'll say it again: We didn't all get our brains washed away with our sins when we got baptized!
(---grin, duck, and run---)
But seriously, you guys are a hoot. I like the way your marvelously perverse minds work.
(I confess I've been known to bait a few Fundamentalists in my time. I learned it from my preacher dad, who could reduce a Jehovah's Witness to something with a strong resemblance to a jellyfish in about two minutes flat. There's nothing like knocking those guys for a loop on their own "turf.")
I'm not so sure about the mitochondrial compatibility thing either; in fact I'm inclined to doubt it very seriously. Mind you, I'm no biologist, and my scientific education in general is way out of date.
But I wonder:
If animal surrogacy were to become a practical option, and if a Fundamentalist couple were to have one of their fertilized eggs carried by a gorilla surrogate, would they be able to stand to look at the kid, knowing that in a way it really was descended from an ape?
p.s. There ain't no bleepin' "War on Christmas." Never was, at least not in the sense that some people these daze (pun intended? you decide) want you to think.
It appears the phrase was coined in 1999 by one Peter Brimelow, former editor of Forbes magazine and The National Review and founder of the white-nationalist, anti-immigrationist organization VDARE, and has gotten far more than its share of airtime on the Fx Nws Chnnl. (Excuse me while I go wash out my keyboard with soap.) It really took off during the 2004 and 2005 holiday seasons (and probably is this year too, but I haven't checked because I hate throwing up).
Of course there's been pushing and shoving over the issue ever since the Puritans (who thought celebrating Christmas was an evil pagan practice) showed up. There was a wave of it in the late 1950s over the abbreviation "Xmas." But this one tops just about everything since the Puritans.
The "war" is entirely in the minds of people who don't have a clue about the difference between "faith religion" and "civil religion." What they don't seem to understand is that what they're blowing all the smoke about is only the window dressing. If they truly cared half as much about the former (the professed "true reason for the season") as they do about the latter (the public trappings that are supposed to make us all feel warm, fuzzy, and community-minded so we'll spend as much money as possible), the world would be a much happier place.
Bah. Humbug. Someone please tell these people to get a life. We Wish You a Merry Unspecified December Holiday. So there.
Two bent, corroded, cruddy brass farthings' worth this time. Sorry, this is one stupidity that doesn't provide me with much wisecrack fodder. Also, I'm on edge about the election. At least Santorum got his butt kicked.
You've forgotten another aspect of the Brave New World: hatred and hostility nurtured by a scientific elite. No matter how radically brave and new your world is, some things, like bigotry and prejudice, will remain. Instead of having religious bigots, or "white bigots," or "rich bigots," we'll have scientific bigots who only know how to ridicule religion (ahem, I mean, the balm for the incurably stupid). Many of these posts have made it apparent that laughing at the other side lets people get away with completely misunderstanding it.
But, who knows, maybe the world will be a better place when, instead of arguing (and, gasp, actually trying to understand another person's point of reference), we can resolve disagreements by derogating the poor religious folk and asserting our own intellectual superiority. Who knew that bigotry could be so useful?
It's possible that I'm mis-interpreting the content of your post (PZ) and many of the responses to it. I could be taking you way too seriously. After all, it's hard to believe that the people who posted could actually be less mature and less open-minded than some of the students at my school (which has a reputation for being one of the most liberal and intellectual colleges in the country); mind you, undergrads can be pretty immature.
Anyway, if someone could enlighten me as to why affirming science apparently must rely on the tactic of pushing people's faces in the dirt and laughing about it, I'd be very grateful. I haven't been able to quite figure it out, and I have a suspicion that some of you might be able to help me.
p.s. the brave new world was a dystopia, was it not? what's so bad about asking bioethical questions that might show us what dystopia would be like before we arrive knocking at its front door?
"There ain't no bleepin' "War on Christmas." Never was, at least not in the sense that some people these daze (pun intended? you decide) want you to think."
Actually it was, since the xtians appropriated old pagan rituals. We still call xmas yule and get away with it. I got visits from both the yule goat (germanic yule, I believe) as well as the yule gnome (xtian perversion of gnome tradition; santa).
So in my view they can't really complain if the tradition is restyled in different groups. or more genreally secularised. That is what freedom of religion should be about.
Swattie:
"Anyway, if someone could enlighten me as to why affirming science apparently must rely on the tactic of pushing people's faces in the dirt and laughing about it, I'd be very grateful."
If you take some time and browse around to "actually trying to understand another person's point of reference" you should see several posts discussing antiscience stances like creationism and how to react. The blog owner prefers an honest approach.
I don't think I am misstating his views if I say that he feels strongly when science is perverted or blocked, or as here both.
Reasoning obviously doesn't help. (As noted above, where is the reason in taking perfectly ethical methods and make a mix with ethical problems for all to try to avoid the problems for a particular dogmatic religious stance?)
So some provocative humor is both welcome and may start people thinking on the problems they make for all of us.
"what's so bad about asking bioethical questions"
Didn't you read the post? PZ is doing exactly that, by showing some of the bioethical consequences of the twisted solutions proposed to solve problems politics has made in vain. Meanwhile we play these religious games, people die that could have been helped by stem cell methods.
Torbjorn:
You're right, I suppose. Humor is a great forum for a lot of things. And, I guess I was somewhat guilty of the prejudice and sarcasm/mockery that I was lamenting in my previous post.
It's just that I see the feelings of smug superiority associated with the humor that's meant to reveal weaknesses in another position VERY often. (But, maybe this is natural, and I shouldn't be complaining about human nature. I just don't know.) My problem in writing the previous post may have been that I have a hard time distinguishing the people who use humor to provoke thought and those who use it to affirm their superiority over others (i.e., creationists/"fundies"). And...I guess I agree with you that PZ's intent involved the former and not the latter.
It's just hard for me to hear people say "those creationists deserve to die...haha." I realize that people very rarely actually mean that when they say it, but it still says something about how they - at least some people - value said creationist as a person. (If it doesn't, I'd be greatly relieved to see someone correct me.)
Perhaps I'm being overly sensitive? (Believe me, I've considered the possibility.) I'm not sure why I care so much, since I don't even consider myself to be a "creationist" or a fundamentalist; if Darwin were alive, I would jump at the chance to be in his posse. But, if derogatory laughter makes people like me (a bio major who LOVES science and thinks the idea of evolution is the greatest thing since Christianity - yes, she takes her Christian faith seriously) uncomfortable, I can't imagine that it would fail to make its usual targets eager to embrace your point and accept the weaknesses in their own arguments. If you laugh and say, "what worthless idiots...born from a cow...blah blah blah," you'll get the people who agree with you to laugh along with you and the people that you were trying to make see reason in the FIRST place hate you. Adopting a more open-minded stance is the LAST thing I would do if I were facing a jeering crowd.
And PZ, sorry to be such a party pooper. I guess my post was mostly a response to a phenomenon that I unthinkingly associated you with...i.e., a response to some/many of the posts that were responses to your post. Anyway, I'm all for humor, and it's encouraging to see that working in a laboratory hasn't robbed you of an acute sense of it. =D
Swattie, you seem to be sincere, so......
If you google a search of "religious leaders" and "biotechnology",
you will get an idea of the level of influence religious groups
are trying to have on biotech research:
Religious Leaders Question Research
Biotech considers religion
I'll get to the point.......my body isn't community
property. So why should I have to get permission
from a "esteemed group of religious elders" before
I allow modification to it?
I don't go to a priest, rabbi or imam to get
permission to make a modificaton to my car or my
computer so why should I ask one for permission
before making a modification to my body?
It's not enough that these religious leaders
are making decisions for their followers....
they have taken it upon themselves to make
decisions for the rest of us as well.
Let them make their technology pronunciomentos
for their flock, and stay out of the private
lives of those who choose not to believe their
souls or whatever will be degraded if they use
designed retroviruses to get bioluminescent tatoos...
If the religious don't want to use a particular
piece of tech, they should just pass it up like
they would at a bazaar for the next person to consider.
Just develop an Amish-like attitude about it, and
the rest of us poor fallen ones will make out just
fine....
Brilliant. As you say, each step in the procedure to generate stem cells is totally defensible. I can't wait to see what arguments the rednecks will dream up to attack it when we all know the only issue is the "yuck" factor.
Almost as good is seeing the reaction to the flight of fancy in the second half of your post.
Stay the course. There is no other choice but "victory" in the war on fundamentalism. Who said that?
Monado wrote:
Yep. Two mouths, no anus. Instead, it has a biological miracle in its lower digestive tract: an organ that teleports its fecal matter to the nearest fundamentalist, conservative politician, or Fox News employee, who then expels it in the manner most natural to such people: emitting it from the mouth in verbal communicative form.
Mtraven- Exactly what I was thinking! But I would have gone for this one:
"You see, I went on with this research just the way it led me. That is the only way I ever heard of research going. I asked a question, devised some method of getting an answer, and got--a fresh qeustion. Was this possible, or that possible? You cannot imagine what this means to an investigator, what an intellectual passion grows upon him. You cannot imagine the strange colourless delight of these intellectual desires.... To this day I have never troubled about the ethics of the matter. The study of Nature makes a man at least as remorseless as Nature. I have gone on, not heeding anything but the question I was pursuing..."
Also, I want to make sure I understand. The only time a "real discussion about biotechnology" can happen is after the fact? It has to be accomplished first before we can discuss whether or not we should? A bit "bass ackwards" no?