I have heard that the pig is very close to humans genetically but what are the most identifiable differences between the DNA of the two?

shygrneyzs

Here are some articles of interest:

Expression of Naked DNA in Human, Pig, and Mouse Skin -- Hengge et al. 97 (12): 2911 -- Journal of Clinical Investigation

Entrez PubMed

maylaur

Thank you for the articles. They are very helpful and interesting!

Here's an offshoot from the original question...

If pig blood and human blood were to be mixed (without any sort of chemical or other treatment) how would the two be distinguished from each other. Someone I know was telling me it would take a year long (or longer) genome study to tell them apart but I do not agree. Aren't there less time-consuming and less expensive tests to perform which could differentiate between the two?

medgen

OK, so if you 'mixed them together' then 'telling them apart' would be virtually impossible, since they are chemically very similar and at this point would be mixed. Something like FACS might separate out the cells, but I don't think that is what you are getting at.

So, let's put this another way -- if you took two separate stains, one of pig blood and the other human blood, then it would be VERY easy to tell them apart. A simple ELISA-type test (using an antibody against human blood hemoglobin, for instance) would be the quickest and easiest way. See more info here: Independent Forensics DNA Testing and Technologies . Genetically they are also very different -- a simple battery of STR tests could very quickly tell you which was the human and which was pig.

On the other hand, there are a great deal of genetic similarities between pigs and humans. Many of the proteins are quite close in sequence and structure, etc. Genetically, this is just a guess, but I'm imagining there is probably around 60% similarity at the genomic level (give or take an order of magnitude :-)).