Extinct ibex is resurrected by cloning

dinosaurs.. the ultimate solution to human overgrowth.
the ultimate war machine.

let loose a few thousand t-rex's and a few hundred thousand velociraptors and (whatever the toothed pterodactyl's name was)..

and you are GOLDEN...

chomp chomp chomp...

i mean.. with all these clonings.. thats what's eventually going to happen right?
i mean think about it.. eventually they'll create dinosaurs.. it's inevitable.
and someone somewhere will ... get eaten by one that gets loose.
then some will eb released on purpose.

maybe that's what the dinosaur era WAS...
imagine if the dinosaurs were intentionally created.. or ressurected from pre existing bones.. to purposely wipe out a previous global civilization... then when all humans were eaten up.. bam nukes wipe them out for a new start.

just hypothesizin'

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They're doing it with Tasmanian Tigers, too. The problem is that they need to put the DNA into a cell from a different animal to get it started, and then it morphs into whatever DNA was implanted. In this case, it's mice.

www.livescience.com...

DNA from an extinct creature has been resurrected in a live animal for the first time.

The genetic material, extracted from the extinct Tasmanian tiger, proved functional in mice.

"As more and more species of animals become extinct, we are continuing to lose critical knowledge of gene function and their potential," said researcher Andrew Pask, a molecular biologist at the University of Melbourne in Australia.

thanks raven for the article...
i also found this quote intriguing:

Reviving genes from extinct animals can't bring them back to life, but it could help retrieve this potentially valuable knowledge. "This research has enormous potential for many applications including the development of new biomedicines and gaining a better understanding of the biology of extinct animals," said researcher Richard Behringer at the University of Texas.
...
To put the finding into perspective, consider that the vast majority of species that have ever lived on this planet are now extinct.

"Extant species — those alive on the planet today — represent less than 1 percent of the total biodiversity that has ever existed," Pask explained. "For those species that have already become extinct, our method shows that access to their genetic biodiversity may not be completely lost."

Having access to a broader palette of genetic sources and our further understanding of how to piece together a plant and animal can only improve our chances for survival here and elsewhere on other planets.

Originally posted by The All Seeing I
Good point... though i think that there is an easily remedy, in that we have multiple fossils found at different geographical locations of any one species.

It's not quite that simple unfortunately.

DNA is quite fragile stuff. During the fossilization process, DNA is effectively destroyed, and can't be reconstructed.

Even with DNA retrieved from frozen specimens (the best form of preservation for DNA), you tend to only get fragments and not the complete sequences. It requires cutting edge technology, but we are only just capable of *maybe* repairing such damage using genetic sequences borrowed from modern day animals.

Finding enough well preserved specimens is going to be the real problem. We might be able to resurrect species that have become extinct recently if there are enough preserved samples, but I seriously doubt we will ever be able to resurrect species that became extinct before we were able to collect genetic material and preserve it.

reply to post by C.H.U.D.


Liquid nitrogen does not destroy DNA, freezing destroys the delicate cell walls, you can still get DNA from damaged cells. You have to freeze plants in liquid nitrogen and then smash into fine powder, the cell walls are to strong for PCR.

Originally posted by 1xion325alpha
Liquid nitrogen does not destroy DNA

Where did I say it did?

Again, once you have the DNA you have to put it in an embryo of some animal... and obviously you just don't have live embryos of most extinct animals. (Some are frozen from animals that have become extinct recently, in the past few years, but not for dinosaurs or anything).

So they use mice or the closest animal that they can find. In most cases, it will never be an exact thing.

reply to post by ravenshadow13


The DNA may be implanted into a surrogate embryo, but that does not mean it takes on the characteristics of the animal that the embryo that it came from.

In the case in question, where the ibex DNA was implanted in a goat embryo, the resulting offspring was an ibex, not a part goat/part ibex.

It's a bit like saying that a dog that is born in a stable is a horse, which of course is completely untrue. It's the genetics, not the "outside" factors that make something what it is (although outside factors influence character and personality later on when the animal grows).

Edit: after re-reading your post, I think I see what you're getting at.

You're saying that we won't be able to resurrect some species because there in nothing similar enough living today?

If that's what you mean, then yes, I think you are correct. I don't think there would be much of a problem doing this with small animals, but it's not going to be easy to get an elephant to carry/birth a Diplodocus embryo/baby for example. There might be ways to get around the problem in future (invitro-pregnancies perhaps?), but a real Jurassic park is a long way off at this time.

[edit on 3-2-2009 by C.H.U.D.]

Originally posted by C.H.U.D.
reply to post by ravenshadow13

 

The DNA may be implanted into a surrogate embryo, but that does not mean it takes on the characteristics of the animal that the embryo that it came from.

In the case in question, where the ibex DNA was implanted in a goat embryo, the resulting offspring was an ibex, not a part goat/part ibex.

It's a bit like saying that a dog that is born in a stable is a horse, which of course is completely untrue. It's the genetics, not the "outside" factors that make something what it is (although outside factors influence character and personality later on when the animal grows).

Edit: after re-reading your post, I think I see what you're getting at.

You're saying that we won't be able to resurrect some species because there in nothing similar enough living today?

If that's what you mean, then yes, I think you are correct. I don't think there would be much of a problem doing this with small animals, but it's not going to be easy to get an elephant to carry/birth a Diplodocus embryo/baby for example. There might be ways to get around the problem in future (invitro-pregnancies perhaps?), but a real Jurassic park is a long way off at this time.

[edit on 3-2-2009 by C.H.U.D.]

eventually.. if you discovered which pairs of genes indicated the dimensions the animal grew to.. you could augment those.. then have the "pygmy" diplodocus be born from an elephant... (or whale)..
then have the pygmy diplodocus implaneted with DNA you've taken from them.. but is changed to be slightly larger than the pygmy.. and onwards and upwards.

or

if you understood the growth pattern in the DNA sufficiently.. you could make it so that the baby would only grow to a certain size.. then when it's growth spurt occurs.. that's when it really increases in size.
so.. it would be small enough to be delivered form the elephant..

but aren't dinosaurs born out of eggs? .. so we can just skip all this stuff..
unless it's for prehistoric mamals.. like a Odobenocetops, or a Glyptodon or no wait even better how about a Marsupial Lion!.


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Originally posted by prevenge

eventually.. if you discovered which pairs of genes indicated the dimensions the animal grew to.. you could augment those.. then have the "pygmy" diplodocus be born from an elephant... (or whale)..
then have the pygmy diplodocus implaneted with DNA you've taken from them.. but is changed to be slightly larger than the pygmy.. and onwards and upwards.

"Designer-dinos"

Yeah, good idea, it's possible...

Or perhaps a better approach (if you didn't want to mess too much with the final product), might be to GM the surrogate mother/womb to be large enough to accommodate the baby dino.

Originally posted by prevenge
if you understood the growth pattern in the DNA sufficiently.. you could make it so that the baby would only grow to a certain size.. then when it's growth spurt occurs.. that's when it really increases in size.
so.. it would be small enough to be delivered form the elephant..

That's also a good idea. We deliver human babies successfully many weeks early in some cases, when they are only perhaps a tenth (?) of their normal birth weight. It shouldn't be too hard to apply some of that knowledge to the problem.

Originally posted by prevenge
but aren't dinosaurs born out of eggs? .. so we can just skip all this stuff..

That is true, and it's one of the reasons I said it would not be easy. I'm not sure that it's true of all dinosaurs however, but that's not the real problem as you said with your post : - we have no *big* egg laying reptiles around today.

I think the largest would be either kommodo dragons or monitor lizards, which are both quite sizable (perhaps 2+ m length?). Not all dinos were very large, so in theory we could use their reproductive systems as surrogates, and, perhaps with the ideas above, go some ways to bringing back a specimen or two back to life.

[edit on 3-2-2009 by C.H.U.D.]