The technique represents an important step towards growing human organs for transplant, say researchers.
A team at the Salk Institute has grown the first living embryos containing cells from both human beings and pigs.
To create the human-pig chimeras, the researchers injected human stem cells – master cells that can develop into any type of tissue – into pig embryos. The stem cells survived and began to integrate with the pig tissue to form a chimeric human-pig embryo. These embryos were implanted in sows and allowed to develop for up to four weeks.
This story is from the May 2017 edition of BBC Earth.
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This story is from the May 2017 edition of BBC Earth.
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