Not just anatomy! I gather that hormones and other chemical factors are very similar.
Somebody smarter than me chime in?
Comment on Pig kidney transplant patient leaves hospital
someguy3@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
This was a big idea decades ago, and then I didn’t hear anything about it until recently. I’m glad it was working away.
From what I read a long time ago, pig anatomy is actually pretty similar to humans. So it would be pretty cool to be able to harvest all sorts of organs.
shalafi@lemmy.world 7 months ago
thefartographer@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Not smarter than you, but are they gonna offer this as an elective surgery? I want peepee that seems like bacon.
lemming@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
There were some compatibility problems that required genetic engineering of the pig. I don’t remember specifics, but there was talk about potential dormant viruses in pig DNA that need to be removed first, possible problems with glycolsylation (sugar chains on the proteins outside of cells) and maybe more. The article also mentions that the pig had some human genes, I’m sure those help compatibility too. So many changes would be next to impossible to do until relatively recently, before use of CRISPR-Cas9. Also, it must’ve taken some time to certify the procedure. That’s why it took so much time since the topic was hot.