2010 National DNA Day Online Chatroom Transcript
This is just one question from an archive of the National DNA Day Moderated Chat held in April 2010. The NHGRI Director and many genomics experts from across NHGRI took questions from students, teachers and the general public on topics ranging from basic genomic research, to the genetic basis of disease, to ethical questions about genetic privacy.
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Why do some diseases affect only humans or only animals when we have the same organs?
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Shawn Burgess, Ph.D.:
I currently study developmental processes and their relation to human genetic disease.
While we do have mostly the same organs, when you look closely at the level of the individual cells (the view something as small as a virus or bacterium would have), the surfaces of these cells can look quite different at the molecular level. So proteins that viruses use to infect human cells could be different enough in a pig that the virus can no longer bind and invade. Sometimes, as with the H1N1 virus, the differences are not so large and the virus can "cross-over" and make adaptive changes that allow it to change species. |
| McClesky Middle School in GA (7th grade student) |
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