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45   Fusion of Fish and Man
     The Washington Post, Sunday, May 21, 1967

     The arcane subject of cell biology has recently undergone a quiet
revolution that will undoubtedly exert a profound influence on human
affairs in keeping with its impact on experimental science.  This is
the manipulation of pure cultures of tissue cells by somatic
hybridization, a method of causing different cells to fuse with one 
another.

     That this sometimes occurred in the body of the normal animal
had been suspected for a long time.  The first demonstration that
tissue cells not only fuse but that the result is a new, viable 
hybrid line of cells is credited to Drs. G. Barski, S. Sorieul and
F. Cornefert of the Cancer Institute of Paris, work first reported
in 1960.  Their compatriot at the University Paris, Professor Boris
Ephrussi, gave this work important impetus as a tool for studies of
cell genetics.

     The discovery by Japanese and British researchers that certain
viruses would promote cell fusion has made the technique a
reproducible one, especially with the help of viruses that have been
inactivated by ultraviolet light so as not to interfere in other ways
with the development of the hybrid cells.

     The experimental results have been outstanding, almost bizarre.
The fusion of cells is frequently followed by a fusion of their
nuclei, with an intermixing of the chromosomes.  The hybrid nucleus
continues to propagate regularly as such in succeeding cell divisions.

     As a rule, then, hybrid cells are mixed both for the nucleus and
the cytoplasm of the parent cells.  However, as shown by Prof. Henry
Harris of the Pathology Department of Oxford University, when 
nucleated red blood cells are used, these cells burst, leaving naked
nuclei which then fuse with the other cells.  This result allows a
clear separation of the information carried in the cell by the nucleus
and the cytoplasm, respectively.

     The most remarkable finding, perhaps, is that cells from very
different animal species can fuse.  Thus it has been possible to
prepare hybrid cells obtained by somatic combinations as widely   
separated as fish and man.  Since other known processes can lead to
the loss of various chromosomes, a vast new field of experimental
genetics is opened.  It is now feasible to synthesize cell lines
which have most or all of their genes from one species with a single
chromosome or part of a chromosome from another.

     The usual reproductive process of animals is, of course, very
narrowly species-limited.  We pay special attention to rare exceptions
like the mule, a donkey-horse hybrid.  This restriction has been a
serious one for experimental genetics, making it impossible to analyze
the very important differences between remote species, for example,
between man and the apes.  

     Human genetics has also been impeded by the obvious difficulties
of achieving the experimental matings that might be the most revealing
tests of gene effects.  It is now possible to bypass these
restrictions.  While we do not yet make entire hybrid organisms, many
fundamental aspects of cell genetics and biochemistry become amenable
to experimental study.  Important findings are beginning to emerge
whose details will doubtless inspire many further reports and
commentaries.

     For the moment passing over these, and some of the more strident
futuristic implications of somatic hybridization, we should note some
of the easier practical applications that are bound to emerge.
Genetic or immunological individuality is now the most vexing barrier
to replacing incompetent tissues by transplantation.  Somatic hybrid
cells would be of advantage in medicine if they combined the
immunological individuality of the recipient cells with the
biochemical capabilities of the donor.

     The immunological individuality would insure that the cells
remained acceptable to the host.  The biochemical capabilities
could then be imported for specialized functions like replenishing
a hormone, say, to treat diabetes, or to recognize and destroy 
aberrant cells, an approach to a treatment of cancer.

     In all likelihood, however, the fundamental knowledge uncovered
by these techniques will far exceed any of the simple-minded
applications we now have the imagination to foresee.
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