内容摘要：Speaking to Israeli television, reserve soldier Aviad Shapira said he found Billie among the rubble and called out to her. “I said ‘shalom’ and she jumped on me,” he said.

Speaking to Israeli television, reserve soldier Aviad Shapira said he found Billie among the rubble and called out to her. “I said ‘shalom’ and she jumped on me,” he said.

A worker at United Therapeutics’ designated pathogen-free facility in Christiansburg, Va., on May 29, 2024 retrives a UV sterilized item from behind a protected barrier within the facility. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)“Tuck it in nice and smooth,” murmurs senior researcher Lori Sorrells, pushing to just the right spot without rupturing the egg. Mild electric shocks fuse in the new DNA and activate embryo growth.

Ayares, a molecular geneticist who heads Revivicor and helped create the world’s first cloned pigs in 2000, says the technique is “like playing two video games at the same time,” holding the egg in place with one hand and manipulating it with the other. The company’s first modified pig, thesingle gene knockout, now is bred instead of cloned. If xenotransplantation eventually works, other pigs with the desired gene combinations would be, too.Hours later, embryos are carried to the research farm in a handheld incubator and implanted into waiting sows.

United Therapeutics’ designated pathogen-free facility in Christiansburg, Va., on May 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)United Therapeutics’ designated pathogen-free facility in Christiansburg, Va., on May 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)

On the research farm, Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’” was serenading a piglet barn, where music acclimates the youngsters to human voices. In air-conditioned pens, the animals grunted excited greetings until it’s obvious their visitors brought no treats. The 3-week-olds darted back to the security of mom. Next door, older siblings laid down for a nap or checked out balls and other toys.

“It is luxury for a pig,” Ayares said. “But these are very valuable animals. They’re very smart animals. I’ve watched piglets play with balls together like soccer.”“Just for context, when I was still an undergrad I should have been on the list,” she said, recalling the anger she felt as she read the letter. What she called “a mind-blowing” credit of 3½ more years waiting also provided “a glimmer of hope” that she’d be offered a matching kidney soon.

Evans got a new kidney on July 4 and is healthy again, and grateful the policy change came in time for her.“You don’t know if people would be alive today” if it had been enacted earlier, she said. Still, that extra step of “making amends to fix the situation for those that we can — I feel like it’s very important and it’s very necessary if you’re truly wanting to bring more equity and equality into the medical field.”

AP Videojournalists Tassanee Vejpongsa and Shelby Lum contributed to this report.The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.