The phrase of the author of the famous "Animal Farm" George Orwell, that there is almost no difference between a man and a pig, is much closer to scientific truth than the author could have guessed. This conclusion was made by journalist Mark Prigg from the largest-ever study of the pig genome, which was published in Nature.
“Scientists have found that pigs are easily adaptable and amenable to domestication, and that they can be easily seduced into food. All these traits are very close to human ones,”the article says.
Moreover, pigs suffer from the same genetic disorders and protein dysfunctions that cause many diseases in humans - for example, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and obesity. Thus, studying the pig genome is the key to new methods of treating human diseases.
But there are differences: a pig has much fewer bitter taste receptors than a human, and it perceives the taste of sweet and meat in its own way. “Perhaps people have domesticated pigs, since these animals are able to feed on what is inedible for humans,” said Professor Alan Archibald.
It is important to analyze the genome in order to breed new pigs in a situation when the demand for meat is growing. This is where wild boar genes can come in handy, scientists noted.
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The similarities between a pig and a person have been written about earlier. There is even, according to many, completely insane, theory of the origin of pigs from humans.
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On the island of Madagascar, fossil skeletons of large pig-headed lemurs - Megaladapis were found. The skull of this primate is very similar to that of a pig. Probably, the megaladapis, as well as the pigs, gruntingly enough, tore the ground with a piglet in search of tasty roots, groundnuts and insect larvae.
However, instead of pork hooves, these two-meter lemurs had a five-fingered "human" hand. (In Madagascar, at that time, impenetrable tropical forests grew. In order to move in the intricacies of vines, trunks and branches, megaladapis retained grasping hands.) Madagascar was isolated from the mainland for almost 100 million years. Nothing prevented the ancient Mesozoic people from quietly and peacefully transforming towards brutality. Some of these people chose to put on the "suit" of a pig-headed lemur … A similar process was going on on the mainland.
Mesozoic people turned into different animals, including pigs. However, the ancestors of future pigs lived in a sparse forest with solid ground and savannas. To make it easier for them to run, they have grown hooves … The embryo of a modern pig, being in the womb of its mother, has a five-fingered hand and a muzzle similar to that of a primate. This may indicate that once upon a time the ancestors of pigs were primates and even humans … Ancient legends are a kind of confirmation of this.
In the Melanian legend of the inhabitants of the Mota Island of the Banking Islands, it is said that the legendary hero Kat once made people and pigs in the same way, but the pigs suddenly wanted to have their own differences. Then Kat knocked the pigs to the ground with one blow of his staff, and after that the pigs began to walk on four legs, and people continued to walk on two …
The pig is anatomically similar to humans. It is not without reason that pig organs are used for transplantation of liver, kidneys, spleen, and even heart. They are much more suitable in size for transplantation than similar primate organs. In addition, monkeys are carriers of many infections. According to some scientists, we caught AIDS through a series of failed transplants from monkeys in the 60s. It is much easier with pigs - they can be grown absolutely sterile. Today, according to medical statistics, transplants of heart valves taken from pigs save lives of heart hearts, and implantation of pancreatic cells saves lives of diabetics.
For a long time, the problem of tissue incompatibility was an obstacle to transplanting pork organs to humans. The graft was rejected after a while. Now this task has been practically solved. It is enough to raise the number of transgenic pigs. To do this, two human genes are introduced into the pig embryo and one pig gene is "turned off". Academician V. Shumakov, director of the Research Institute of Transplantology and Artificial Organs, believes that the organs of such animals will take root and will work well in the human body. To the question of meticulous journalists: will transgenic pigs look like people, the academician replied that changes will occur only in their genes and transgenes, as they were pigs, will remain with them …
There are far-reaching plans for use as surrogate mothers for carrying human embryos for sows. Such experiments are already being carried out in many countries of the world … and they give good results.
So, according to some reports, babies were born in China and the USA, which were carried by a pig. Healthy females were previously crossed with males. Then a week later, under anesthesia, pig embryos were removed from their uterus, leaving only one. After that, a fertilized human egg was planted in the uterus. The piglet growing up with its human brother was needed so that the pig in the early stages of pregnancy did not have a miscarriage. The female's body must be sure that it is raising its offspring, and not someone else's.
Then everything went on as usual. The pregnancy was proceeding normally. The pigs were given special drugs to prevent the onset of labor, since pigs have a shorter gestation period. At the end of the ninth month, the pigs underwent a cesarean section: the baby's head was larger than the pig's birth canal and the newborn could not appear naturally. A slight jaundice was the only nuisance that accompanied the birth of babies. (This situation is similar to the Rh-conflict between a mother and a child in a normal pregnancy. It was caused by the destruction of pig blood cells in the child's body and the start of the production of its own red blood cells by the bone marrow.) There are no special biological obstacles to the widespread adoption of this method of birth of people. There are only ethical obstacles: is it good that the child will have a surrogate mother - a pig?
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“Scientists from the Weisman Institute in Israel have recently been able to extract a small number of specially selected cells from a human embryo of seven to eight weeks and transplant them into the embryo of a 4-week-old piglet,” says Alexander Dubrov, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor, Senior Researcher of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The cells began to develop and formed a fully functioning organ - the kidneys. The close similarity between human and porcine cells allows scientists to grow organs from pig tissue that would be suitable for humans. At the same time, such an important problem as the rejection of the transplanted organ is eliminated."
But there are also difficulties. Pigs in the process of evolution "picked up" a lot of all kinds of viruses, which the human body is unlikely to be happy with. And the risk of rejection remains. But the prospects are nevertheless good, and research in this direction is considered very promising. And the infection in the organs of the donor is a disposable thing. Abroad, they have already realized the importance of the issue and have created special transgenic pig farms.
“Scientists today confirm that even monkeys do not have as many coincidences with us at the genetic level as a pig,” continues Professor Dubrov. - Therefore, there are more and more experiments with the participation of these cute animals. Newly born in America, five adorable piglets look no different from their brethren. In reality, they are an intermediate stage between a pig and a man. Every cloned American woman has at least two human genes."