Re: Species Resurrection

DK wrote:
Tim Tyler <seemysig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: [...]

--> http://timtyler.org/species_resurrection/ <--

The essay starts:

Resurrecting species that had previously been thought extinct now seems
to be quite technically possible.

Not a chance. All modern technologies require you to come up,
as a bare minimum, with chromosomes, not just with DNA sequences.
That means all the DNA methylation, all the histones and auxillary
proteins present in the right places in right amounts all with proper
modifications. No way.

Well it hasn't been done /yet/.

My piece was triggered in part by a recent news story:

``Scientists in Maryland have already built the world's first
entirely handcrafted chromosome ? a large looping strand of
DNA made from scratch in a laboratory, containing all the
instructions a microbe needs to live and reproduce.

In the coming year, they hope to transplant it into a cell,
where it is expected to "boot itself up," like software
downloaded from the Internet, and cajole the waiting cell
to do its bidding. And while the first synthetic chromosome
is a plagiarized version of a natural one, others that code
for life-forms that have never existed before are already
under construction.

http://www.dentonrc.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/121707dnnatsynbio.2bf46e0.html

.....as well as by the sequencing of the genome of one extinct
species.

Species resurrection now looks to be pretty clearly in the
forseeable future - and that's interesting not least of all
because Homo floresiensis and Neanderthal man may well prove
to be within reach:

``Unleashing a new kind of DNA analyzer on a 38,000-year-old
fragment of fossilized Neanderthal bone, scientists have
reconstructed a portion of that creature's genetic code -
a technological tour de force that has researchers convinced
they will soon know the entire DNA sequence of the closest
cousin humans ever had.''

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/15/AR2006111501042.html

As a wise man once said:

"Light will be thrown on the origin of Man and his history."
--
__________
|im |yler http://timtyler.org/ tim@xxxxxxxxxxx Remove lock to reply.

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