The Wonders of Biotechnology

reply to post by hypervalentiodine

Life Tech isn't a pharma company. That's not where they make their money and they have no reason to expand in that area.

Gene Therapy isn't a form of medicine?

The article you quoted said that the project was being funded by an external company,

Your right, missed a couple.
Here is one. 3.5 Million
Source

Scientists from Libya will be trained at the University of North Texas, said Arthur Eisenberg, a forensic scientist at the university. The Life Tech equipment is expected to be installed in the Libyan capital of Tripoli in a few months, he said.

Eisenberg said he’s worked with Life Tech for several years, and helped the company test new DNA identification products. His lab is noted for identifying remains submitted from across the United States, and from other countries.

One problem in identifying human remains is that the DNA isn’t of the laboratory quality typically collected for research, Gerace said. The remains may be many years old, and weren’t preserved.

“In this case, we use a kit specifically designed around extracting DNA from degraded samples, such as bone, teeth, and other adhesives you may use to try to lift DNA off material objects,” Gerace said.

The Life Tech kit has extracted DNA from samples thousands of years old, Gerace said, including material from the tomb of King Tutankhamen, who ruled Egypt about 3,300 years ago.

This one also mentions that the cost of the equipment that LIfe Technologies is donating to this project wasn't disclosed. I am going to guess that means its really not cheap.

Are there other, more plausible explanations? Certainly. But then it wouldn't be a conspiracy theory

Oh, and Arthur Eisenberg also works for the US Government.
Bio



Hmmm.....i wonder if you could modify a maggot to produce meat, instead of meat producing maggots.

Blacklight Bunnies
ABC News

What do you get when you cross a jellyfish with a bunny rabbit? Glow in the dark bunnies.
No, seriously. That’s not a joke. It’s not even science fiction. Scientists at the University of Hawaii have collaborated with a team of Turkish researchers to breed a litter of neon rabbits. By injecting luminescent proteins from a jellyfish into rabbit embryos, they produced two bunnies that hop, twitch their noses and radiate a bright green under florescent light.
These are not the first glowing bunnies in existence. Alba, the original “light hare” was conceived back in 2000 by a French artist and scientist as an art installation. Rabbits aren’t even the only species that have been genetically engineered glow in the dark. Scientists have created pigs, sheep, monkeys, puppies and kittens that light up like mammalian lightening bugs under black lights. And you can readily purchase transgenic fish in six brilliant colors under the brand name GloFish.

Awesome, now we can make bunnies that glow like easter eggs.

I love the future.

Thanks to advances in biotechnology, extinct animals may return!



Live Science
This is a fascinating article that deals with the various work to bring back extinct species using new advances in Biotechnology.

Biologists briefly brought the extinct Pyrenean ibex back to life in 2003 by creating a clone from a frozen tissue sample harvested before the goat's entire population vanished in 2000. The clone survived just seven minutes after birth, but it gave scientists hope that "de-extinction," once a pipedream, could become a reality.

Ten years later, a group of researchers and conservationists gathered in Washington, D.C., today (March 15) for a forum called TEDxDeExtinction, hosted by the National Geographic Society, to talk about how to revive extinct animals, from the Tasmanian tiger and the saber-toothed cat to the woolly mammoth and the North American passenger pigeon.

Though scientists don't expect a real-life "Jurassic Park" will ever be on the horizon, a species that died a few tens of thousands of years ago could be resurrected as long as it has enough intact ancient DNA.

Among their many candidates are:

Wooly Mammoth
I have to admit i was pretty excited to hear about this discovery, and now as the chances of successfully reviving this get better i am even more hopeful that someday soon we will get to see a living one.

Discovery News

Russian scientists claim to have discovered blood in the carcass of a woolly mammoth, adding that the rare find could boost their chances of cloning the prehistoric animal.

An expedition led by Russian scientists earlier this month uncovered the well-preserved carcass of a female mammoth on a remote island in the Arctic Ocean.

Great Auk

The Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis) is a large, flightless bird of the alcid family that became extinct in the mid-19th century. It was the only modern species in the genus Pinguinus, a group of birds that formerly included one other species of flightless giant auk from the Atlantic Ocean region. It bred on rocky, isolated islands with easy access to the ocean and a plentiful food supply, a rarity in nature that provided only a few breeding sites for the auks. When not breeding, the auks spent their time foraging in the waters of the North Atlantic, ranging as far south as northern Spain and also around the coast of Canada, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Norway, Ireland, and Great Britain.

I really dig this idea, maybe because of its vast range of territory and the fact that it lives in the ocean.

They are also working on reviving the Tasmanian Tiger

The thylacine had become extremely rare or extinct on the Australian mainland before European settlement of the continent, but it survived on the island of Tasmania along with several other endemic species, including the Tasmanian devil. Intensive hunting encouraged by bounties is generally blamed for its extinction, but other contributing factors may have been disease, the introduction of dogs, and human encroachment into its habitat. Despite its official classification as extinct, sightings are still reported, though none have been conclusively proven.

This should prove interesting, especially if there are still a few hanging around in Australia.

Then there is an effort to revive the Gastric Brooding Frog

"This was not just any frog," Mike Archer, a paleontologist at the University of New South Wales, said during his talk at TEDxDeExtinction, which was broadcast via livestream. These frogs had a unique mode of reproduction: The female swallowed fertilized eggs, turned its stomach into a uterus and gave birth to froglets through the mouth.

"No animal, let alone a frog, has been known to do this – change one organ in the body into another," Archer said. He's using cloning methods to put gastric brooding frog nuclei into eggs of living Australian marsh frogs. Archer announced today that his team has already created early-stage embryos of the extinct species forming hundreds of cells.

Here is just a short list of some the other extinct species from the Americas i would hope to see revived through Biotechnology.
Dire Wolf
American Cheetah
Smilodon
Short Faced Bear
Argentarvis

So tell me, what would you like to see?
I love the future!