Hi all,
 
I read todays (6/21) FML with much interest about conjecture of the
possibility of having a person implant a ferret embroy.  Sounds
interesting, but i think there are a couple of problems with it.
 
1) The human female must be pseudopregnant, you'd have to fake the body
into thinking it's pregnant.  Its fairly tricky, but we do it on mice, so
maybe that would work.  This has to do with hormonal regulation of the
development process.
 
2) The ferret embroy must be surgically implanted into the human.
Shouldn't be a problem, but it's very tricky to get into the placenta
without causing major problems.  I've seen a case of spina bifida where
they removed the fetus and reinserted it, successfully, but it was a rare
case.
 
3) The nutrient demands of the ferret would have to be the same as a human
embroy.  I don't think this will be true.  At the molecular level, it
involves signalling molecules from the mother to the embroy.  While we are
very similiar genetically to ferrets and other mammals, there is a big
compatibility problem here.
 
However, i think in general the same species could successfully carry
offspring of others, like we do with people, so called test tube babies -
from this perspective it would be much safer if we started with a ferret
fertilized egg.  Both the male and female donors would *have* to be ferret,
this i am fairly certain about - similiar studies with mouse-human hybrids
never survive very long with both sets of genetic info.
 
Anyway just my $.02, interesting idea!
 
-Rob
 
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   Robert Dejournett             [log in to unmask]
   Graduate Student
   Graduate School of Biomedical Science
   University of Texas Houston
[Posted in FML issue 2718]