Forgetting about the ethics here: would it be probable, if tried, for
mating a human with it's nearest neasest cousins, chimpanzees and bonobos? Would the result likely be, like mating a donkey and a horse, sterile? What do you think the odds are that some curious geneticist has already done this, at least as far as creating an embryo?
2007-02-26 09:40:50 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Biology
in terms of hybridization like a donkey, or a liger, no. But in terms of a chimera (created by the mixing of cells from independent zygotes), there is not reason that we couldn't create a cross between a human and another creature particularly one closely related. An example of a chimera is a "geep" that was created from a mixing of a goat and a sheep.
As far as a human chimera, it has already been done although the resulting embryo were only developed for a few days in order to harvest stem cells. The chinese fused human skin cells and rabbit egg cells.
In the future, biotech companies would like to use chimera technology to produce tissue, organs, thereputic drugs, etc.
2007-02-26 18:07:09 · answer #1 · answered by audionaut 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I'd say that the divergence would be so great that any hybrids created would be inviable, and the embryos would die before birth. There's a lot of genetic distance there and I think Hox genes and the like wouldn't be able to do much with the combined genome.
2007-02-26 11:20:00 · answer #2 · answered by kiddo 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I'm sorry, but I can't loss this joke!
I'm sure that my mother-in-law is a perfect product of a hibridization between a mamal and a reptil (a SNAKE!). Don't believe me? Give-me your adress and I'll send it (the snake in person) to stay with you for one year or more (one year is OK to make all the studies about the hibridization process?)...
2007-03-03 22:21:22 · answer #3 · answered by Apolo 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I think that it would be impossible.
2007-02-26 09:51:16 · answer #4 · answered by Jen of Eve 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋