Federico Alemán Girard (7°A)
When I was younger, I liked gardening with my dad and sister, I remember my sister would take a seed of one plant and try to mix it with another type of seed to make a combined plant grow.
Almost a week ago, it came to my attention that some scientists were trying to make a hybrid chimera (an organism that contains cells from two different species) and my mind instantly went back to my younger self, watching my sister trying to combine different seeds. The difference between these two situations is that while my sister never succeeded, these scientists did. They used two different methods to obtain the hybrid models, one of them consists in taking organs from one species and transplanting them into the other organism from a different species with the risk that said organism would reject the new organ, and then using scaffolds to make sure the organ grows in the correct shape. The other way is introducing cells from one species into an embryo of another. They started experimenting between mice and rats and then pigs came into the mix. When they succeeded with transplants such as eyes, pancreatic tissues, and a rat heart inside of a mouse, then they threw humans into the mix, taking human and pig embryos that created chimeras with no discovered errors yet. All this is because they want animals to become the host to organs we might need for transplants, that way we wouldn’t need all that comes with finding an organ donor, since these organs would be customized.
I don't want to say I don't have faith in it, but maybe don't play with genetics in 2020.
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