IntroductionAs you all might remember, I wrote a post a while ago regarding the ethics of some genomic practices. Some of the questions I posed include: -Should DNA technology be used to bring back extinct species? -Is is really feasible to use DNA technology to bring back extinct species? -What are the possible health implications of DNA technology? -Could DNA technology make a truly permanent impact on the Earth as a whole? -Could DNA technology be used to eradicate disease and cancer, and if that happens, how would we sustain a planet where essentially everybody lives? In order to get a better understanding of current genome science research and hopefully answer some of the questions I posed a while back, a looked online for a current article regarding genome sciences. The article I found was this one. Summary of the Article I readThe article I read, published by National Geographic, details how scientists created human-pig chimera embryos in a lab and the implications of their work. Basically, the chimera embryos are created by taking the embryo of a pig and injecting humans stem cells into them. Early chimeras were created by taking a mouse embryo and injecting rat stem cells, some of which survived beyond the womb and actually lived on to be adults. While many protest against the hybridization of species, scientists hope to use these chimeras as donor organisms that can be used for organ transplants and the like. Scientists chose pigs as the organisms to hybridize, as their organs look a lot like human organs, even though they take less time to gestate. A challenge that the scientists will have to overcome in the future is the fact that they have to keep a low amount of human cells to pig cells. As of right now, there is about 1 human cell for every 100,000 pig cells in the chimeras. Some Questions I haveIf these human-pig embryo hybrids were able to survive beyond the lab and actually become a full grown organism, would they be subject to basic human rights?
Could the creation of a human-pig hybrid lead to another gateway for the passage of illness between species (similar to swine flu or bird flu but easier to pass on)?
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In our video, Vaishnavi, Olivia, Elaine, and I modeled the process of mitosis and meiosis with candy in order for our viewers to better understand the topic. While our modeling video did excelled in some aspects, such as providing an in depth explanation of mitosis, providing additional diagrams that helped deepen understanding for the viewer, and an explanation of the process of binary fission, it had some errors in the video and lacked some content that we felt we needed.
First, we never explained to our viewer that all models are wrong, and only some are useful. Our model had limitations that made it unable to fully illustrate the complexity and intricacy of mitosis and meiosis. Secondly, we never fully explained the purpose of synthesis, instead just going over the process of synthesis. We should’ve let the viewer know that synthesis is important because in order for the cell to prepare for and undergo mitosis and meiosis, all the chromosomes must be duplicated. Next, we should’ve gone more in depth into the processes and purpose of meiosis II. While we modeled meiosis II well, we didn’t explain much to the viewer and didn’t really let the viewer understand that the daughter cells divide, splitting up sister chromatids to form haploid gametes. This leads to our next shortcoming in that we didn’t really relate the process of meiosis to fertilization. We should’ve let the viewer know that the process of meiosis creates haploid gametes that fuse during fertilization to produce a diploid cell. We also should’ve modeled the process of fertilization ourselves, rather than relying on models from outside sources. Lastly, as it inevitable to have some errors in our dictation of our script, we had some slip-ups that we addressed in the description under our video. The two slip-ups that we found were that we said “centromere”, rather than centrosomes at 1:52, and we said “from meiosis”, rather than from mitosis at 5:28. Overall, I feel our group worked well together and shared the work equally. |
AuthorAllan Kalapura. Holland Hall class of 2019. Archives |