OMG. We may actually see dinosaurs in our lifetime yet

Post by **tnf** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 4:34 am

Nightshade wrote:I wasn't sure, you are one of those Jesus types, after all.
I found the Gilgamesh thing quite interesting. Heard it on NPR on the way home the other night. Also, Gilgamesh was an ass bandit. :lol:

Jesus types? That's like saying any Muslim is one of those 'terrorist types' (i.e. an extremist.) I'm an evolutionary biologist....I'm pretty much ostracized by most 'real' Christians because I don't read the OT as a literal text.

Post by **Dukester** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 2:06 pm

Maybe I'm wrong, but wasn't the cloned sheep grown and then inserted into another sheep to finish the birthing process (laymens terms, I'm not really sure what I'm talking about). If so how would they even attempt to clone an ancient dinosouar at this time? How would they "get on with the cloning"?

Post by **Jackal** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 2:22 pm

Dukester wrote:Maybe I'm wrong, but wasn't the cloned sheep grown and then inserted into another sheep to finish the birthing process (laymens terms, I'm not really sure what I'm talking about). If so how would they even attempt to clone an ancient dinosouar at this time? How would they "get on with the cloning"?

they's just insert the fetus into gramps since he's such a fucking dinosaur himself.

Post by **Ryoki** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 2:41 pm

Nightshade wrote:Did you know that there's a Noah legend from Babylonian culture in the Tale of Gilgamesh? Predates the bible by a loooooooong time.

There's so many cultures that have a form of the Great Flood story that it's not even funny anymore: the Aztec, the Hebrews, the Vikings, the Sumerians, the ancient Greeks, the Inca's...

I think mankind crawled out of the stoneage twice - we were tossed back the first time by a worldwide disaster.

EDIT: do a search for 'great flood' on wikipedia, interesting stuff for sure.

Post by **tnf** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 6:08 pm

Dukester wrote:Maybe I'm wrong, but wasn't the cloned sheep grown and then inserted into another sheep to finish the birthing process (laymens terms, I'm not really sure what I'm talking about). If so how would they even attempt to clone an ancient dinosouar at this time? How would they "get on with the cloning"?

Because they probably hatched from eggs. So, we would need some sort of egg to use.

They wouldn't be 'birthed' like a sheep.

Post by **Dukester** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 6:14 pm

tnf wrote:
Dukester wrote:Maybe I'm wrong, but wasn't the cloned sheep grown and then inserted into another sheep to finish the birthing process (laymens terms, I'm not really sure what I'm talking about). If so how would they even attempt to clone an ancient dinosouar at this time? How would they "get on with the cloning"?
Because they probably hatched from eggs. So, we would need some sort of egg to use.

They wouldn't be 'birthed' like a sheep.

Okay, that seems pretty obvious now that you've said it

Post by **tnf** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 2:43 am

It still wouldn't be simple. I can't remember what kind of eggs they used in Jurassic park, but obviously that movie was a bit of a stretch.

Post by **SplishSplash** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 12:40 pm

crocodile eggs

Post by **werldhed** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 2:02 pm

Even if using a crocodile or other reptilian/bird egg, cloning of dinos is not likely to happen in the near future. Currently, we can only clone by use of whole nuclei of living cells, not parts of DNA strands, and I'm pretty sure cloning has only been accoplished by means of using a surrogate of the same species. I'd suspect that even if you managed to get a nucleus into a surrogate egg cell, development of that cell could lead to some problems, like egg DNA/nucleus DNA incompatability, expression of dino antigens on the egg (not too likely), differences in reproductive biology of dinos and surrogates, etc...

Even when the conditions are right, the success rate of cloning is about 1 in 250. That means they would need to isolate a lot of intact, viable cells to expect results, and it doesn't sound like they have too many. It is possible that you could increase the amount of DNA available by PCR or plasmid transplantation, but you'd be left with free DNA and no nucleus. At this point in time, that won't help.

So there are still a lot of hurdles to get over before we can bring partial or damaged DNA back from the dead.

BTW, I'm playing the skeptical devil's advocate. I personally think we'll continually get closer, and there is always potential for improving technology. It's still a ways off, though.

Post by **[xeno]Julios** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 6:56 pm

well they'd better hurry - i was thinking instead of throwing myself in with a hungry tiger, as a creative form of suicide, i could do the wrestling thing with a rex

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 9:23 pm

That's cool, I want a pet velociraptor!

Post by **Bdw3** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 9:32 pm

Just be sure to have him de-clawed to keep him from messing the couch. :icon14:

Post by **andyman** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 9:33 pm

I can see Bob Barker saying it now: Have your dino's spayed and neutered to control the population

:icon19:

Post by **tnf** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 12:13 am

werldhed wrote:Even if using a crocodile or other reptilian/bird egg, cloning of dinos is not likely to happen in the near future. Currently, we can only clone by use of whole nuclei of living cells, not parts of DNA strands, and I'm pretty sure cloning has only been accoplished by means of using a surrogate of the same species. I'd suspect that even if you managed to get a nucleus into a surrogate egg cell, development of that cell could lead to some problems, like egg DNA/nucleus DNA incompatability, expression of dino antigens on the egg (not too likely), differences in reproductive biology of dinos and surrogates, etc...

Even when the conditions are right, the success rate of cloning is about 1 in 250. That means they would need to isolate a lot of intact, viable cells to expect results, and it doesn't sound like they have too many. It is possible that you could increase the amount of DNA available by PCR or plasmid transplantation, but you'd be left with free DNA and no nucleus. At this point in time, that won't help.

So there are still a lot of hurdles to get over before we can bring partial or damaged DNA back from the dead.

BTW, I'm playing the skeptical devil's advocate. I personally think we'll continually get closer, and there is always potential for improving technology. It's still a ways off, though.

Biologists know that you never say never.

Post by **Massive Quasars** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 1:25 am

It is possible that you could increase the amount of DNA available by PCR or plasmid transplantation, but you'd be left with free DNA and no nucleus. At this point in time, that won't help.

Good enough? We can wait.

Post by **werldhed** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 4:36 am

tnf wrote:Biologists know that you never say never.

Isn't that the truth? We also know it's never a good idea to assume our explanations are correct -- there's nothing quite as refreshing as skewing data, after all...

I certainly think we'll get to the point where we can clone pretty much anything, including dead life forms. However, despite any amount of soft tissue or intact blood cells we find, our current methods won't cut it. We'll come up with something eventually, even if it's only as far as growing dino tissue cultures. However, we'll need to advance cloning technology, and that's not going to happen under the direction of the Big W.
So all you other countries: hop to it!

Post by **werldhed** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 4:47 am

Massive Quasars wrote:
It is possible that you could increase the amount of DNA available by PCR or plasmid transplantation, but you'd be left with free DNA and no nucleus. At this point in time, that won't help.
Good enough? We can wait.

I agree. Especially since there is potential to learn a lot if there is good DNA in the tissue. I think it ought to be replicated and studied first at the molecular level, as tnf suggested, to learn more about the evolutionary science. Then we can worry later in the future if the cloning tech has caught up.