猪猴嵌合体首次出现

猪猴嵌合体首次出现

Pigs engineered to have a small amount of monkey cells have been brought to full term and were even born alive, surviving for a few days after birth. Although the piglets died, it is claimed the experiment - performed in China - marks a major milestone for the future of lab-grown organs.

被改造成含有少量猴细胞的猪足月生产，甚至出生时存活了几天。尽管这些小猪都死了，但据称，这项在中国进行的实验是未来实验室培养器官的一个重要里程碑。

This is the first report of full-term pig-monkey chimeras, Tang Hai of the State Key Laboratory of Stem Cell and Reproductive Biology in Beijing told New Scientist.

北京干细胞与生殖生物学国家重点实验室的唐海告诉《新科学家》:“这是第一份足月期猪猴嵌合体的报告。”

The research is part of an ongoing effort to develop animals - whether they are sheep or pigs - that can grow human organs we could then harvest for transplants, a process called xenogeneic organogenesis.

这项研究是正在进行的培育动物的努力的一部分，无论它们是羊还是猪，都可以培育出人类器官，然后我们可以收获这些器官用于移植，这个过程被称为异种器官形成。

Research has been done on both pig and sheep embryos with transplanted human stem cells; in both cases, the embryos continued to develop until the experiment was deliberately terminated.

已经用移植的人类干细胞对猪和羊的胚胎进行了研究;在这两种情况下，胚胎继续发育，直到实验被人为终止。

That's because, due to ethical concerns, these chimeras - organisms that incorporate the genetic material of another species - cannot be cultivated or studied in the later stages of embryonic development. Some scientists worry that some of the human stem cells could end up in other parts of the animal or even in its brain, with unintended consequences.

这是因为，出于伦理上的考虑，这些嵌合体——包含其他物种的遗传物质的有机体——不能在胚胎发育的后期培育或研究。一些科学家担心，一些人类干细胞可能最终会进入动物的其他部位，甚至是大脑，带来意想不到的后果。

For that reason, in this experiment the team used stem cells from crab-eating macaques (Macaca fascicularis). These were imbued with fluorescent proteins so that they would glow under fluorescent light, and derived to produce fluorescing embryonic cells.

因此，在这项实验中，研究小组使用了来自食蟹猕猴的干细胞。它们被注入了荧光蛋白，这样它们就能在荧光灯下发光，并衍生出能产生荧光的胚胎细胞。

These cells were then injected into over 4,000 five-day-old pig embryos fertilised using IVF; the modified pig embryos were subsequently implanted into sows.

这些细胞随后被注射到4000多只5天大的试管婴儿胚胎中;改良后的猪胚胎随后被植入母猪体内。

This fiddly and painstaking work produced just 10 piglets that made it to full term and were born alive. And only two of these were chimeric, with between one in 1,000 and one in 10,000 functional monkey cells to pig cells.

这项精细而艰苦的工作只生产了10头足月出生的小猪。其中只有两个是嵌合的，在1000个猴子细胞和10000个猪细胞中各有一个。

The monkey cells had migrated to the heart, liver, lungs, spleen and skin of the piglet hosts, but were not found in other organs, such as testes and ovaries, due to the low rate of chimerism, the researchers said.

研究人员说，这些猴子细胞已经迁移到小猪宿主的心脏、肝脏、肺、脾脏和皮肤，但在其他器官，如睾丸和卵巢中没有发现，因为嵌合率较低。

Sadly, before a week was out, the piglets died - not just the two chimeras, but the other eight normal piglets, too. Because all the pigs died, Hai told New Scientist, the cause of death likely had less to do with chimerism, and more to do with IVF - a procedure that is notoriously tricky in pigs.

不幸的是，不到一个星期，这些小猪就死了——不只是两个嵌合体，其他八只正常的小猪也死了。Hai告诉《新科学家》杂志，因为所有的猪都死了，所以死亡的原因可能与嵌合作用关系不大，而更多的是与试管受精有关。

The low chimerism rate is also somewhat discouraging. However, the researchers remain optimistic. Although the birth rate was low, and the pigs didn't survive, the team now has a wealth of data they can apply to future experiments.

较低的嵌合率也有些令人沮丧。然而，研究人员仍然保持乐观。尽管出生率很低，猪也没能活下来，但研究小组现在有大量的数据可以用于未来的实验。

The scientists are planning to try again, increasing the chimeric cell ratio. And they believe their data may help other scientists working in the field.

科学家们计划再次尝试，增加嵌合细胞的比例。他们相信他们的数据可能会帮助其他在该领域工作的科学家。

Here, we have used monkey cells to explore the potential of reconstructing chimeric human organs in a large animal model, they wrote in their paper.

他们在论文中写道:“在这里，我们用猴子细胞来探索在大型动物模型中重建嵌合人类器官的潜力。”

We believe this work will facilitate the development of xenogeneic organogenesis by providing a better understanding of the processes of xenogeneic recognition, fate determination, and the proliferation and differentiation of primate stem cells during porcine development.

“我们相信这项工作将促进异种器官发生的发展，通过提供对异种识别、命运决定以及在猪发育过程中灵长类干细胞的增殖和分化过程的更好理解。”

The findings could pave the way toward overcoming the obstacles in the re-engineering of heterogeneous organs and achieve the ultimate goal of human organ reconstruction in a large animal."

“这一发现可能为克服异种器官重组的障碍，实现大型动物人体器官重建的最终目标铺平道路。”

The research has been published in Protein & Cell.

这项研究发表在《蛋白质与细胞》杂志上。