Lab Equipment Blog

We've got chickens and birds, and have a good idea that they came from dinosaurs.

If I was going to make living things I'd be working on making humanoids that were designed for conditions on Mars.

By the way, what Earth animals are already ready to live on Mars?

We really do need to fix up Venus, in my opinion...

"We really do need to fix up Venus, in my opinion..."

Naaah, too easy.

At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, One of the leading colleges for genetics research. have done tests and research on this very subject.

To see if there are any prehistoric dormant genes in chickens.........they were able to turn some of these dormant genes on........(some of the stuff is movie material) such as the gene for chickens to grow teeth

actually even had some air time on the discovery channel.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1026340/Jurassic-Park-comes-true-How-scientists-bringing-dinosaurs-life-help-humble-chicken.html

Fine by me. There are no hunting limits on them in my state.

Unless you have a bazooka, I don't think you'll be taking down a T-Rex. It would be like shooting something twice the size of a charging elephant.

Wouldn't use a bazooka, that would ruin the meat! But a 50 caliber rifle should make about the right size hole to drop one.

As you bring the raptor down............don't look behind you but his hunting party is about to..........

just though of something.....would raptor it taste like chicken.

Why chickens when you could use ostritches = rapidosaurus!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Spencer.

Horner's welcome to it. I can think of some roosters I've known that I wouldn't want walking out-of-sight behind me, and with teeth no less!

I always thought that dinosaur would taste like chicken.

Raptor, the other white meat...

Eat it before it eats you!

When will scientists learn the difference between could and should? <rhetorical>

This is worse than turning a high school electronics student loose inside the latest teraflops computer and telling him to switch a few connections around without giving him any schematics or instructions.

I wonder if Dr. Larsson realizes how complex and interrelated the machinery of a single cell is. I would be amazed if he got anything that survives and reproduces in reasonable health.

First, he needs to do a LOT of reverse engineering. He apparently assumes that much of the DNA in the chicken is evolutionary leftovers ("junk" DNA), and he just has to fix it up and turn it on. The junk DNA hypothesis is based solely on the evolutionary hypothesis and the observation that it is relatively variable (leading to a probably false conclusion that it must not be important enough to keep stable between generations). This hypothesis has led to a lot of bad science and missed opportunities. Only in the last few years have researchers taken the time to discover the intricate regulatory functions of DNA that doesn't code directly for proteins. It appears that far from being junk, it is in fact the main control program of the cell; coding DNA is only data. The program is capable of adapting itself to different conditions by several methods (methylation, sectional duplication, and even cut and paste relocation), driven by both environment and developmental requirements; that is why it seems so variable.

Until you know how the chicken program works, changing bits and pieces of it won't even give you a turkey...

You are so correct.........They go in and activate genes...how? not quite sure. but basically trial and era.

What I have heard from UW-Madison its not so much junk DNA, but Dormant DNA. But they do not have a map, or know which gene carries the prehistoric or ancient qualities. They find that out by activating these genes. and then wait for the results.

How fiction resembles fact. Like Jurassic Park wait till the egg hatches to see which dinosaur emerges.

But I can see your point;

It appears that far from being junk, it is in fact the main control program of the cell; coding DNA is only data. The program is capable of adapting itself to different conditions by several methods (methylation, sectional duplication, and even cut and paste relocation), driven by both environment and developmental requirements; that is why it seems so variable.

it can be a Genetic modification and have nothing to do with how it actually was.

Its like messing with the human genes and making them grow feathers, and derive that humans came from birds

but your comment.

Until you know how the chicken program works, changing bits and pieces of it won't even give you a turkey...

How, then? without dissecting it and using reverse engineering.

My key points are

1. A lot of eggs will be ruined, and there will be little to show for it if the work does not focus first on understanding the operation of the chicken genome.

2. (Note: the following is the result I expect based on my observations and presuppositions.) The genome is all chicken. There are no dinosaurs hiding inside. Even if a large amount of DNA is found which seems to do nothing, that is not likely to be dormant dinosaur DNA, but is "just-in-case" programming that permits the chicken to deal with special circumstances. For example, there may be genes that are activated only when the liver encounters a certain class of toxins.

We know through selective breeding that the chicken is capable of considerable variety in external characteristics (color, feather morphology, head crest, etc.) and musculature. However, there are practical limits to the basic chicken design, and these experiments, if nothing else, should find them and perhaps elucidate understanding of them. If you study the characteristics of the common breeds, especially the modern factory chicken varieties, you will find that many of them are already up against these limits, and have various handicaps requiring special attention by the farmer. The chicken, like any other complex design, likely includes trade-offs to accomplish its ecological function in the most effective manner. These design considerations, not lost dinosaur information, will determine the boundary of the modification space.

I'm not saying, "Don't do it," but if the intent is to make a dinosaur out of a chicken just by flipping switches, I fully expect failure. If the intent is to better understand the design of chickens, it's worth doing. I can't make a bank of floodlights into a milling machine just by flipping switches; I'd have to melt it down and reforge it. The way to make a chicken into a dinosaur is to first find a dinosaur to eat the chicken.

What I'd like to know is, how would he tell the chick-a-saur of genes past from the whatever-a-chicken-might-give-rise-to in the future?

Just flip the switch, dude, we're ready... (The heirs of Colonel Sanders, anyway...)