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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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 Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2008 7:16 am Post subject: When an invasive species might be a good thing |
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http://scienceblogs.com/erv/2008/10/return_of_the_pervs_abandoned.php
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Why the hell was I interested in pig organs? Well, pigs can be genetically engineered to be almost perfect organ donors for humans that need transplants. Perfect... except for the fact pigs have PERVs like humans have HERVs.
So sure you could put a pig aortic valves into humans... but would those transplanted organs start producing pig-specific retroviruses? Would they evolve into the next HIV-1/AIDS pandemic? Would they stay silent and everything would be fine? Hell, we dont know what the human ERVs do in humans!
A potential solution to this problem has come from a rather... odd... source: abandoned island pigs. |
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Rae
Joined: 10 Oct 2007
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| Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2008 2:01 pm Post subject: |
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So I look-up HERVs:
http://members.aol.com/dstormmom/vetcenter/herv.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrovirus
Interesting stuff. I'm curious if highly homogeneous ethnic groups, such as Koreans, have more HERVs. Also, what about "mixed" couples? It was always regarded that a "mixing" would always be positive, but that never took into account retroviruses. I'd like to read more articles on the subject if you have any. Thanks! |
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