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Did I find the origin of the swine flu?

Wed Apr 22, 5:54 am ET
SEOUL (AFP) â�� South Korean scientists said they have cloned a piglet whose organs were genetically modified to make them more suitable for human transplants.

Lead scientist Lim Gio-Bin said the cloned piglet, born on April 3, had been genetically altered to lack the "alpha-gal" gene which triggers tissue rejection.

He said his government-sponsored team, involving scientists from four universities and two research institutes, used stem cells of smaller-than-normal pigs to clone "mini-pigs" with modified genes.

Immuno-rejection has been a major hurdle in human organ transplants.

Pig organs are well suited for transplantation but are coated with sugar molecules that trigger acute rejection in human bodies. Human antibodies attach themselves to such molecules and quickly destroy the transplanted pig organ.

"Our team produced four cloned mini-pigs from about 100 surrogate pigs but only one male named Xeno survived," Lim told AFP, adding his team is now working to produce a female piglet.

"Through mating we will be able to produce many genetically modified mini-pigs whose organs are more suitable for xenotransplantation (transplantation between different species)," he said.

In cloning Xeno, the scientist said his team adopted almost identical technology to that used by US scientists in 2002 to create cloned piglets, in which one copy of the sugar-producing gene was "knocked out."

An organism receives two copies of a gene, one from the mother and one from the father. Scientists have tried to produce pigs lacking both copies, so far unsuccessfully.

"Through our achievement South Korea became the second country in the world to clone such piglets after the United States," Lim said.

"I believe our methods are slightly better. Xeno will help us accumulate technology and resources, which can be used to produce many mini-pigs of good quality."

Lim said his team would conduct clinical trials on humans in 2012 and he believed genetically modified mini-pigs could be used commercially around 2017.

[I found the above article in Yahoo News "science" section] A mere coincidence? Or do you think someone's not telling us the whole truth?

Posted 6 months ago

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dartist

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

Anytime the natural order of any kind of life is manipulated there are bound to be repercussions. Genetic engineering opens up doors and some are beneficial but this news article is disturbing.

I recently watch a program on the Documentary Channel about genetically altered canola seeds. The mutated seeds are taking over the Canadian fields of this crop and altered cotton seeds have created havoc in India already. The same program showed the effect of genetic engineering on farm animals. Very sad.

Posted 6 months ago

Other 5 Answers to Did I find the origin of the swine flu?

paulinlv	Posted Apr 28th, 2009 at 1:17AM No, you didn't. That story has nothing to do with the flu. Most flu strains can exist in several animals. Often, the virus is transmitted to, say, a pig, where it mutates a bit, and then to birds, where it mutates a bit more, and then back to humans. By the time it gets back to humans, it has mutated enough that it looks different to our immune system, so our last flu outbreak doesn't confer any immunity to the newer version. This is why the CDC watches the emerging flus in China. Since many villagers might own some pigs and ducks, it's common for the flu virus to wander through humans, ducks, pigs in China before jumping back into humans. This particular strain has mutated enough that is looks very different than it used to, so our immunity to it is very low. Hence, it can cause a serious infection before our immune system gears up and makes antibodies to the new strain. The above news article is nothing to fear. The same research has been done in the US. Pig hearts are a good size to use for human transplants. The problem is that our immune system rejects them as being foreign. The pigs were engineered so that certain cell surface proteins that cause our body to reject the organs have been removed. No biggie, but a great potential source of new hearts. Rated: +2Vote for this!
mustIlikeeveryone	Posted Apr 27th, 2009 at 7:32PM Whoa....too weird! Rated: +1Vote for this!
youngmiss	Posted Apr 27th, 2009 at 8:21PM the swine flu is a mutated version of the bird flu. scientists predicted the only way the bird flu could reach humans was through pigs. So, there you have it. Rated: +1Vote for this!
allofus	Posted Apr 28th, 2009 at 12:18AM original swine flu goes back to the early 1900's in Europe and Germany. During WW1 some american soldiers were set up to help certian farmers save their farms and get their livestock to market. It was there the contracted a type of flu from the pigs, thus swine flu. It took about 2-3 years for this strain to make its way around the world and die out. Same with everyother case since than. Every flu eventually dies off, but a little of it becomes dormant in some unsuspecting host and began to mutate and be more resliant and many years later come back for a rematch. This is just another in a long line of flu's. Rated: +1Vote for this!
Katfather	Posted Apr 28th, 2009 at 1:33AM Not unless they were able to send it back into time, namely 1917.. Swine flu is nothing new. It first appeared around 1917, 'born' in the horrible trenches of World War I The poor soldiers of then had to spend YEARS in filthy, wet surroundings, sometimes with the dead lying next to them in the dirty puddles (one common habit at that time was to "shake hands with the dead' before going out into battle. They did this by holding the hand of a dead solder for a second, not caring what he had died of, for luck, and as a show of courage to 'prove ' they weren't afraid of death). You don't need a lab to make a deadly flu; the trenches of World War I was enough, and the horrible Swine Flu was born there and grew more powerful with all the solders coming back home in 1918. The Swine Flu epidemic killed thousands in America (Including my grandpa, which is why I know it so well). So, why is it back? Simple, it never left. The fact of the matter is, that as long as there's life on Earth, no type of virus or disease can EVER die off. It can get to a area that's almost deserted of life, but it'll still live off of something (such as the hogs sent to the solders at the front for food, which is the reason for the "Swine" name), or even hibernate in another form that isn't so deadly and thus so noticed as well (We know for example, that there's rodents in the four corners area of the U.S. that still carry a form of the "Black Death' that killed so many people in Europe so long ago. The only reason there hasn't been a bad new outbreak is because of it's new form and because there's so few people in that area to have much to do with the rodents) Rated: +1Vote for this!

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