system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
When a child get's an organ/limb transplant, will the transplanted organ/limb grow with the child? If so, will the organ/limb grow according to the donor child's body genetic makeup or the recipient's?
gpt
Some organ transplants (such as heart transplants) need to be reasonably size-matched between the donor and the recipient. That means that a baby can only receive a heart from another baby - there's no room to stick an adult heart in. In these cases, yes, the organ does grow with the child. When they first started doing heart transplants, they weren't sure if this would be the case or if they would have to re-transplant every few years as the child grew, but it turns out that the heart will grow. The donor heart maintains its own DNA (hence the need for organ recipients to take anti-rejection medication for life), and would grow according to the donor's genetic makeup. That being said, the organ would also be receiving input cues from its environment (i.e., the recipient's body) that may influence how it would grow.