l-bow

Can baboon organs have less chance of rejection than EVEN human organs? According to this usenet post, then answer seems to be yes.

http://groups.google.com/groups?dq=&...3Dtalk.origins


Something seems wrong. Wouldn't good baboon-human match be a rarity? And how come the rejections for baboon to human tranplants are almost alway more acute than human to human transplants? Or am I wrong? Or is Wade trying to mess with my mind?

Peez

Hi,

I don't know if it is true or not, but the basic idea that is being put forward seems to be that:

There is genetic variation in the MHC gene in humans (there are differences between humans in the MHC gene).

Some humans are only a little different from each other in this gene, others are very different.

On average, the difference in this gene between a human and a chimpanzee or a baboon would be greater than that between humans, but the maximum difference between two humans might be less than the minimum difference between a human and a chimpanzee or a baboon.

Even if this is true, I would expect it to be easier to find a human-chimpanzee match than a human-baboon match. If variation in the MHC gene could be quantified in one dimension, it might be something like:

human MHC: 1000-1100
chimpanzee MHC: 1150-1250
baboon MHC: 825-925
maximum human-human difference: 100
minumum human-chimpanzee difference: 50
minimum himan-baboon difference: 75

Hope this helps.

Peez