Buw what if they tried to approximate a dinosaur’s genome through an n-way diff between living descendants and still-usable fossils?
What is the fundamental truths this article is saying? DNA decays at a rate determined by how it’s preserved. Under some conditions it may last about 7 million years. What about other conditions?
Several papers claiming that 135 million-year-old insect DNA had been extracted from amber were later debunked after it was found the remains had been contaminated with human genetic material.
This doesn’t really tell us anything about how long DNA can last in amber. So that question remains.
Like you say, extremely unlikely, but not exactly case closed.
Poor journalism. The scientists who speculate about resurrecting dinosaurs no longer view fossils as a source for DNA. That idea was discarded years ago, and this study merely confirms it.
The speculation now is based on a completely different source of DNA — the leftover genetic material that is still present (but inactive) in dinosaur descendants (aka birds).
There’s already been some progress in that area. Biologists have successfully “turned out” inactive genetic material in a chicken embryo to cause it to grow teeth.
The speculation now is based on a completely different source of DNA
And there’s Plan C: Deciphering enough to write our own code from scratch.
Edward,
Even better. They have recreated a gene from a 500 million year old species of bacteria.
[[[These guys have reconstructed an ancient gene from an ancestor of the bacterial organism E coli that lived some 500 million years ago. They’ve then replaced the modern version of this gene with the ancient one in a population of E coli.
“This marks the first time an ancient gene has been genomically integrated in place of its modern counterpart within a contemporary organism,” they say.
This is Jurassic Park on a bacterial scale (although a better name given the timescale might be Cambrian or Ordovician Park). ]]]
Only tangentially related, but this is kind of neat. The only known fossil of a spider attacking its prey.
Yes, reverse engineering seems a reasonable approach once we have enough data and computing power. Inputs: Complete DNA maps of a large number of existing species; a solid understanding of the expression of the proteome and how genes interact to cause specific features; add in the ground truth of the combined set of fossils we have, some of which are fossilized down to the cellular level… and I think the time will come when we will be able to recreate very close approximations and anything which we know existed.
Cross T-Rex with the domesticated loyalty of Fido and you’ve got a whole new meaning to junk yard dog.
Or recreate Triceratops as a replacement for cattle. It would eliminate both the predator and rustler problem for ranchers 🙂
Triceratops was always a favorite. But if you cross and elephant and a rhinoceros and asked the rustler what chased him, his answer would be…
Eleph’I’no.
If we can replicate Triceratops before the EMP attacks wipe out modern civilization, they can replace the M1A1.
I’mna picturing Marmaduke with a serious ‘tude… Better, replace T Rex with some flavor of velociraptor. Gives new meaning to ‘get offa my lawn (for your own good)’
Why resurrect something that never went extinct? At least the 2 legged versions…
Of course we may always find their descendants in the Delta Quadrant.
Did the Gorn ever make it into the delta quadrant? Shouldn’t 3D space be divided into octants? (or perhaps the name of the orthant that represents the actual dimensionality of reality? as we understand it when we meet the Gorn?)
Ken,
It wasn’t the Gorn. It was Saurians from Star Trek: Voyager: Season 3: Episode 23 Distant Origins.
Yes, the Dinosaurs did have a space program and just left the Solar System, at least the intelligent ones 🙂
Buw what if they tried to approximate a dinosaur’s genome through an n-way diff between living descendants and still-usable fossils?
What is the fundamental truths this article is saying? DNA decays at a rate determined by how it’s preserved. Under some conditions it may last about 7 million years. What about other conditions?
Several papers claiming that 135 million-year-old insect DNA had been extracted from amber were later debunked after it was found the remains had been contaminated with human genetic material.
This doesn’t really tell us anything about how long DNA can last in amber. So that question remains.
Like you say, extremely unlikely, but not exactly case closed.
Poor journalism. The scientists who speculate about resurrecting dinosaurs no longer view fossils as a source for DNA. That idea was discarded years ago, and this study merely confirms it.
The speculation now is based on a completely different source of DNA — the leftover genetic material that is still present (but inactive) in dinosaur descendants (aka birds).
There’s already been some progress in that area. Biologists have successfully “turned out” inactive genetic material in a chicken embryo to cause it to grow teeth.
The speculation now is based on a completely different source of DNA
And there’s Plan C: Deciphering enough to write our own code from scratch.
Edward,
Even better. They have recreated a gene from a 500 million year old species of bacteria.
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/429380/biologists-replay-500-million-years-of-e-coli/
[[[These guys have reconstructed an ancient gene from an ancestor of the bacterial organism E coli that lived some 500 million years ago. They’ve then replaced the modern version of this gene with the ancient one in a population of E coli.
“This marks the first time an ancient gene has been genomically integrated in place of its modern counterpart within a contemporary organism,” they say.
This is Jurassic Park on a bacterial scale (although a better name given the timescale might be Cambrian or Ordovician Park). ]]]
Only tangentially related, but this is kind of neat. The only known fossil of a spider attacking its prey.
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/10/scienceshot-100-million-year-old.html
Yes, reverse engineering seems a reasonable approach once we have enough data and computing power. Inputs: Complete DNA maps of a large number of existing species; a solid understanding of the expression of the proteome and how genes interact to cause specific features; add in the ground truth of the combined set of fossils we have, some of which are fossilized down to the cellular level… and I think the time will come when we will be able to recreate very close approximations and anything which we know existed.
Cross T-Rex with the domesticated loyalty of Fido and you’ve got a whole new meaning to junk yard dog.
Or recreate Triceratops as a replacement for cattle. It would eliminate both the predator and rustler problem for ranchers 🙂
Triceratops was always a favorite. But if you cross and elephant and a rhinoceros and asked the rustler what chased him, his answer would be…
Eleph’I’no.
If we can replicate Triceratops before the EMP attacks wipe out modern civilization, they can replace the M1A1.
I’mna picturing Marmaduke with a serious ‘tude… Better, replace T Rex with some flavor of velociraptor. Gives new meaning to ‘get offa my lawn (for your own good)’
Why resurrect something that never went extinct? At least the 2 legged versions…
Of course we may always find their descendants in the Delta Quadrant.
Did the Gorn ever make it into the delta quadrant? Shouldn’t 3D space be divided into octants? (or perhaps the name of the orthant that represents the actual dimensionality of reality? as we understand it when we meet the Gorn?)
Ken,
It wasn’t the Gorn. It was Saurians from Star Trek: Voyager: Season 3: Episode 23 Distant Origins.
Yes, the Dinosaurs did have a space program and just left the Solar System, at least the intelligent ones 🙂