What will happen if you put chicken genes into humans? Will we grow feathers? Have beaks? If you put horse DNA into a

Question: What will happen if you put chicken genes into humans? Will we grow feathers? Have beaks? If you put horse DNA into a fish, will it grow hooves?
- Keywords:
  animal,
  beak,
  chicken,
  DNA,
  feather,
  gene,
  genetic engineering,
  GM,
  hooves,
  horse
Asked by pops to Helen, Jenni, Mark, Martin, Stu on 20 Jun 2011.
- Jenni Tilley answered on 20 Jun 2011:
  
  Hmm, it’s not quite that simple. I’m not a geneticist so I can’t really give you any background, but there are specific gene interactions and I’m pretty sure transplating one gene from one organism to another organism will not result in wierd features.
  
  I do know stuff about putting other animal bits in humans though because I work on tissue engineering – building new body parts so that we don’t have to rely on transplants any more. Lots of the materials we use to make our tissue engineered body parts come from animals (generally cows, pigs and sheep). The biggest problem with this is that sometimes the body rejects these materials because the body doesn’t recognise them. This is the same when people swap organs and is why people having organ transplants have to take drugs that suppress their immune system.
  
  When we’re designing our new tissue engineered body parts, we often put them in animals first to check they can do the job. You might have seen this picture of a mouse with an ear on its back? http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1945000/images/_1949073_mouse_ear300.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1949073.stm&h=180&w=300&sz=8&tbnid=NrS9cyZafJbQCM:&tbnh=70&tbnw=116&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dmouse%2Bhuman%2Bear%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=mouse+human+ear&usg=__ax0YlLn0kN_Lu_LfCdT_kEZoPL0=&sa=X&ei=YFb_TdSoJ8KxhAecsdWaCw&ved=0CB8Q9QEwAA
  The ear hasn’t actually grown there, like lots of people think. Tissue engineers put it there, to see if it could last long enough for new tissue to grow into it.
  
  One more interesting tissue engineering fact: the origins of organ transplants can be traced back to a man hundreds of years ago who lost a part of his skull in battle. Surgeons replaced the missing piece with a piece of a dog’s skull and the man was fine. However, the church decided it made him ‘unclean’ and excummunicated him. In the end the man had the piece of skull removed so he could go back to church. He died very soon after.

Question: What will happen if you put chicken genes into humans? Will we grow feathers? Have beaks? If you put horse DNA into a fish, will it grow hooves?

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