Cloning Dinosaurs? Purley Science Fiction

[jrl51592]

There's a difference between cloning a dinosaur and genetically modifying another animal to make it resemble a dinosaur. What you're describing would seem to be "re-engineering" the chicken to more resemble something reptilian in nature. I don't think it's concievable to tinker with a few lines of genetic code and *poof* you've made a velociraptor from a canary.

I know, they never showed the embryo's alive and becoming full grown modified chickens unfortunately. But it's still pretty cool that they could make the chickens grow reptilian features like that. It's been a few years since I watched that science show on the Science Channel about it but, I do think I remember them talking about birds having "special" or "inactive" genes in them that when they are "activated," like that with the chicken embryos, they can grow features like that of reptiles. So in a way, they were "unevolving" the chickens that they experimented on.

 

[Hawke]

It's an easily solvable problem: We just travel back in time and take the DNA from freshly shotgun-blasted Dinosaurs.

 

[TheGurw]

It's an easily solvable problem: We just travel back in time and take the DNA from freshly shotgun-blasted Dinosaurs.

Someone phone Dr. Who.

 

[oozinator]

Good news, was talking to my genomics professor today, he verified that theoretically at absolute zero a DNA molecule would be in complete molecular standstill and not decay, since there would be no molecular movement. The closer you get to absolute zero −273.15 C the more molecular movement will slow down and hinder decay. Now it's a question of where it was really cold back in the day and has stayed cold.
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So maybe somewhere in Antarctica there is a possibility that some tiny amount of tissue has been preserved. Further inland probably. According to wiki the mean annual temperature of the interior is −57°C, I'm not sure if it gets even colder underground, I know thermal inertia keeps temperatures underground pretty constant but I dunno how magma affects underground temperatures.

In any case I still have hope in the far far future.

I wonder what kind of mathematical relationship exists between the temperature of preservation and DNA's half-life.

The paper stated that DNA's half life at - 5 C (~ 268 Kelvins) is 521 years, which would only give us a shred of hope of finding a single, viable DNA molecule in a 6.8 million year old sample.

In order to get that same shred of hope for finding a single, viable DNA molecule in a 68 million year old sample, the half-life would have to be 10 times longer.


If a 20 C (or less) decrease in temperature does not translate into a doubling of half life, I'd say that our chances are still pretty much nil.

Considering Earth's distance from the sun, I'd also say that there's no place on Earth at any time that could sustain temperatures that are remotely near to absolute zero for long through a natural process. Besides physical processes, endothermic reactions can draw heat from the surroundings but you'd run out of reactant rather quickly.

In my opinion, I think we'd have the technology and understanding to re-engineering "faux" dinosaurs before we find such well-preserved fossils.

 

[TheGurw]

Reverse engineering animals that still contain remnant genetic material from that era is likely the closest we will ever get - at least until we can custom create DNA from scratch.

 

[Serenity595]

My dreams today have been absolutely smashed. Like the delicate amber that they were once encased, they are proven false and impossible. Nature posted an article stating that DNA has a typical half-life of 521 years. This means that under the most ideal situations, DNA can be preserved for a maximum of 6.8million years. So, what does this have to do with my dreams? The simple fact that it would not be at all possible to clone dinosaurs. Considering they went extinct some 65million years ago, any evidence of DNA in samples paleontologists may recover are too degraded for use in cloning.

At least we may still get a wooly mammoth...

You're dead to me! Literally!

Interesting stuff, but that's only if you assume dinosaurs lived that long ago.

I mean, personally I think it would be awesome if we lived back in the days of the dinos. Just imagine!

Of course, in our modern times, the actual cloning process itself though would be nearly impossible anyway so meh.

This would be a fun idea for a novel, though (man living with dinosaurs in the past).