Bringing Dinosaurs Back To Life

[Olivio]

I heard that they were going to try and mix a Mammoths DNA with an Elephant and also certain Dinosaurs with lizards, Crocs, Gators or Snakes if my memory serves me correctly.

Can this be done?

[Baldric]

I believe it can, Corbyn is doing ok.
;o)

[Arksided]

A Mammoth snake does seem to ring a bell... I'm sure I've heard that before.

[jim360]

I'm not so sure about the dinosaur DNA part (I'll answer in a separate post, if I can find a source that isn't Jurassic Park) -- but the Mammoth + elephant DNA thing not only can b done but already has been, apparently: for example, see http://www.livescience.com/50275-bringing-back-woolly-mammoth-dna.html

The work in question is still in its early stages, though. I would guess that we'd have to wait at least another five or ten years before a more serious test of the idea, but it appears to be possible in principle.

[stuey]

If that does come to pass I don't rightly see a bunch of them critters being allowed into the petting zoos.

[Olivio]

The 1st 2 posters, naughty naughty :)

Stuey Imagine an Island like Jurassic park. It would be amazing, the greatest show on earth.

Many thanks Jim60. I believe we need to throw ethics out of the window when it comes to being able to bring back extinct creatures especially the ones that were made extinct by man but if we can bring back creatures that were extinct before we walked the earth I truly believe we'd be able to learn a lot about our own DNA and the fantastic implications of how this could affect us.

This would open up many theories and hopefully not a pandoras box regarding diseases which could end up with us being extinct.

[woofgang]

Olivio, I believe we should NEVER throw ethics out of the window. If people will do something for a good reason, the next step is doing it for a bad one!

[Old_Geezer]

I assume there has to be a chance it can be done as otherwise they'd not waste their time.

The more interesting question is where are they going to release them back into the wild ?

[Arksided]

A great quote from Jurassic park from Jeff Goldblum's character.

Ian: Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.

[jim360]

With respect to dinosaurs I couldn't find any sources to suggest that the idea is even being seriously considered at the moment. The essential problems are roughly that:

- no dinosaur DNA has ever been found, or is ever likely to be, owing to DNA tending to decay over time.
- Such DNA as has been found in Dinosaur fossils has never really been tested but it's not obvious that it would even come from dinosaurs anyway, as the possibility of contamination at some point along the cycle is huge (it's more likely that the DNA traces belong to microbes that feed on the remains, for example).
- Even DNA that survives for any length of time tends to be of very poor-quality in general, eg tiny fragments where we would realistically need far more of the original material in order to clone successfully.

I would say that anything you heard about cloning dinosaurs is probably at best a scientist spokesman hedging their bets rather than wanting to imply that the idea is even remotely possible, at least in the foreseeable future. Mammoths are more likely and in principle some of us alive today could see it.

The ethical questions are interesting and difficult to answer but are probably overblown in light of how difficult this is to achieve anyway.

[Hypognosis]

Mammoths are a feasible recreation because examples dug out of permafrost are still fresh enough to eat and you can extract DNA from a sample of flesh as big as you like. Multiple cells means multiple copies so any fragmentation or "data loss" from one DNA strand can be recovered by sequencing copies from hundreds of other copies.

Secondly, the tranplantation of donor DNA into an elephant ovum is established technology and likely required to get the 'fertilised'* egg to attach to the womb lining.

Thirdly, give or take any problems from the size of the mature foetus, the elephant is roughly the right shape and size to carry it to term. The physiology is similar but the dietary preferences and tolerance of warm climate would set it apart from the herd that raises it so, straight away, human intervention is going to be called on to support it, which may last 50 years. Ethics must kick in when it comes to a lifetime responsibility having to be handed down to others who didn't choose it, merely felt obliged to follow a parent's choice of lifestyle.

* When sperm haven't been involved, the cell has to be stimulated to kickstart cell division.

[waterboatman]

Coffee time. Back in a tick.

[Hypognosis]

Dinosaur DNA has, I gather, always been too fragmentary to give any clues as to which jigsaw piece they may be. It takes three "letters" to code for one amino acid so you need several triplets to stand a change of working out what kind of protein it is coding for (some, like collagen, have a predictable repeating pattern).

Your best bet for retrieving a sample big enough to do PCR and sequencing is by drilling into the teeth. Bacteria should have had a hard time penetrating to there although, for mineralisation, every inch has been percolated for millenia by mineral solutions, so it is a wonder any DNA is recoverable at all. I would rather believe what jim said, that these are traces of microbial DNA, washed into rock crevices in recent centuries. One even needs to rationalise why no living thing has passed by and scavenged this morsel of vital nutrients.

[atalanta]

Only in Hollywood

[wildwood]

It would be fascinating, but unrealistic. Perhaps we should concentrate more on the creatures that are still around and try to save them from extinction.

[Peter Pedant]

woolly mammoths arent really dynosaurs
the last one died around 3500 y ago

and yes s/o has got the money to clone one

http://www.livescience.com/51424-woolly-mammoth-genome-sequenced.html

it is more - extinct animals

and they are trying it with a quagga which is an extinct zebra in south africa ( or was the q an infertile horse-zebra cross ? )

http://blog.nature.org/science/2014/10/13/quagga-can-an-extinct-animal-be-bred-back-into-existence/

good photies of an extinct quagga

[ someone in amsterdam was going thro a pile of old photos and said 'mein gott this is a quagga! and no one knew' and the curator said well you are a bit late it died 150 y ago ]