Jurassic Park, is it possible?

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marie_1988
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Jurassic Park, is it possible?

Post by marie_1988 »

What do you guys think? If we are able to successfully gather complete DNA from prehistoric creatures do you think eventually we will be able to clone them?

I think it would be pretty awesome. It would probably be best to keep dinosaurs in a zoo or Jurassic Park type park setting but I think it would be pretty awesome.

Now I'd recommend anybody building such a park watch the movie and make sure they don't make the same mistakes or leave the same loopholes but it would be pretty awesome if something along the lines of a real live Jurassic Park could be scientifically engineered in the future.

What do you think? Do you think it's possible?
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Re: Jurassic Park, is it possible?

Post by EXreaction »

Of course it will be. Genetic engineering has come a very long ways in the past few decades and if it keeps going as fast as it is I don't think a Jurassic Park would be out of the possibilities in another decade or two.

The problem would be finding complete or mostly complete DNA. I also imagine that, given another two to four decades we'll have computers powerful enough to synthesize DNA to make whatever kind of animal we want with very high accuracy rates, so even if we couldn't get dino DNA we could make our own. :)

Now the question will be whether a few of the more outspoken groups go and attack people working on this through media, etc, and try to make laws stopping this for whatever BS reason they can think of. That would be the only thing stopping it.
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Re: Jurassic Park, is it possible?

Post by marie_1988 »

I just located some further information on the topic:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1026340/Jurassic-Park-comes-true-How-scientists-bringing-dinosaurs-life-help-humble-chicken.html wrote:Deep inside the dusty university store room, three scientists struggle to lift a huge fossilised bone.

It is from the leg of a dinosaur.

For many years, this chunky specimen has languished cryptically on a shelf.

Interesting but useless — a forgotten relic of a lost age.

Now, with hammer and chisel poised, the academics from Montana State University in America gather round.

They are about to shatter this rare vestige of the past.

Why would they do such a thing?
Dinosaurs from When Dinosaurs Roamed


Image
Lost age: Scientists now believe it is possible to resurrect the dinosaur after the discovery of DNA relics in the wings and beaks of regular chickens

The answer is that they believe that this single fragment of a beast which stalked the earth untold millions of years ago could hold the key which will unlock the secrets of the dinosaurs.

Extraordinarily, they contend that it could lead to a real life Jurassic Park, where dinosaurs are once again unleashed on the world by scientists.

For just like in the hit Steven Spielberg movie, these men and women are intent on cracking the genetic code of the dinosaurs and opening the possibility of bringing them back to life.
<snip>
And here come the dinosaurs!
Last edited by darcie on Tue Jan 27, 2009 4:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Majority of article removed. Please see GD rules for quoting news articles.
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Re: Jurassic Park, is it possible?

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EXreaction wrote:Of course it will be. Genetic engineering has come a very long ways in the past few decades and if it keeps going as fast as it is I don't think a Jurassic Park would be out of the possibilities in another decade or two.
HA!!! You know the whole thing about getting the DNA from the mosquitoe? DNA only lasts only a few years. Not "millions and millions". I personally don't believe that evolution is accurate, even if it were, the noses on the dinosaurs were the size of the nose on an horse, it would die on site. :idea:

but it makes for a good movie :D
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Re: Jurassic Park, is it possible?

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EXreaction wrote: Now the question will be whether a few of the more outspoken groups go and attack people working on this through media, etc, and try to make laws stopping this for whatever BS reason they can think of. That would be the only thing stopping it.
You write about some "BS reason" to stop it. Why would someone want it? I don't think "awesome" is a reasonable argument.
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Re: Jurassic Park, is it possible?

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There's a big difference between what's technically possible and what can actually be done.

At the moment we don't even know every base of the human genome (the published data has a lot of holes - I know cos I did some of it!!) so creating a dinosaur from the small fragments that are available is virtually impossible. You don't know what's in the bits that are missing. Sometimes it's just non coding 'padding' sometimes it's something vitally important. Even a missing single base pair can throw everything out of whack. That creates a frame shift which means you don't make the right amino acids in the right order to make a particular protein. Without a template of whole dino DNA to go on it would be very difficult to create one.
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Re: Jurassic Park, is it possible?

Post by Brf »

Kevin Clark wrote: You don't know what's in the bits that are missing.
If you read the book, you would know that in Jurrasic Park they filled in the holes by using DNA from related creatures. They say that the human genome is more than 99% identical to that of Great Apes. They would fill in the gaps by using DNA from modern birds or reptiles.
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Re: Jurassic Park, is it possible?

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You'd be surprised.

I've done a 23 species comparison of the alpha globin cluster. Yes large parts are 'similar' but you can't necessarily drop in random bits from other species.
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Re: Jurassic Park, is it possible?

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EXreaction wrote:Now the question will be whether a few of the more outspoken groups go and attack people working on this through media, etc, and try to make laws stopping this for whatever BS reason they can think of. That would be the only thing stopping it.
Did you actually see the movies?
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Re: Jurassic Park, is it possible?

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Re: Jurassic Park, is it possible?

Post by Brf »

Kevin Clark wrote:You'd be surprised.

I've done a 23 species comparison of the alpha globin cluster. Yes large parts are 'similar' but you can't necessarily drop in random bits from other species.
Yup. In Jurassic Park they used bits from a poisonous toad and were surprised they ended up with a poisonous dinosaur.
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Re: Jurassic Park, is it possible?

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weatherkid wrote:HA!!! You know the whole thing about getting the DNA from the mosquitoe? DNA only lasts only a few years. Not "millions and millions". I personally don't believe that evolution is accurate, even if it were, the noses on the dinosaurs were the size of the nose on an horse, it would die on site. :idea:

but it makes for a good movie :D
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.h ... A964958260
A_Jelly_Doughnut wrote:You write about some "BS reason" to stop it. Why would someone want it? I don't think "awesome" is a reasonable argument.
That is not an argument against science. If people thought like that you would never have a computer or any of the modern amenities.
Techie-Micheal wrote:Did you actually see the movies?
I don't see what you are trying to go after here, but yes, I've seen them, and within the last month again.
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Re: Jurassic Park, is it possible?

Post by Techie-Micheal »

EXreaction wrote:
Techie-Micheal wrote:Did you actually see the movies?
I don't see what you are trying to go after here, but yes, I've seen them, and within the last month again.
Then you would see that they aren't stupid reasons for people not wanting it to happen.
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Re: Jurassic Park, is it possible?

Post by SamG »

EXreaction wrote:That is not an argument against science. If people thought like that you would never have a computer or any of the modern amenities.
It's ironic (to me, at any rate) that science is now telling us that all these "amenities" may not be sustainable. We're even down to calculating the environmental impact of a Google search.

But that's a different discussion. Science does not merit, just because it's science, a blank check -- financially, ethically, or whatever. An argument against cloning dinosaurs is, in itself, nothing more than an argument against cloning dinosaurs. To spread out such an argument like some sort of "BS" assault on science and then taking the liberty to dismiss it as such isn't a very rigorous approach to the argument.
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Re: Jurassic Park, is it possible?

Post by Phil »

weatherkid wrote:DNA only lasts only a few years. Not "millions and millions".
Actually, DNA lasts for a very long time. (conceivably infinitely depending on where it is obtained from).
weatherkid wrote:I personally don't believe that evolution is accurate,
What is your foundation for this?
weatherkid wrote: the noses on the dinosaurs were the size of the nose on an horse, it would die on site. :idea:
Erm, how do these correlate at all...
SamG wrote: Science does not merit, just because it's science, a blank check -- financially, ethically, or whatever. An argument against cloning dinosaurs is, in itself, nothing more than an argument against cloning dinosaurs. To spread out such an argument like some sort of "BS" assault on science and then taking the liberty to dismiss it as such isn't a very rigorous approach to the argument.
Agreed, that being said, however, "because we can" (in my eyes, anyway), isn't enough to warrant the amount of funding that would be necessary for this, were there to even be any benefit from it.
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