Re: Breeding more Dinosaur-like Chickens feasible in mid-term?

Dr Mephesto wrote:
Hi,

I am interested in opinions of a project I have in mind involving
evolutionary development.

As birds are more or less dinosaurs, more precisely decended from
theropod dinosaurs and in the microraptor group, and that it is now
knows that so-called junk DNA actually contains deactivated ancestoral
genes and regulatory elements ( see:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000E9965-99A6-13FB-99A683414B7F0000
and http://article.gmane.org/gmane.music.dadl.ot/38988 for examples of
teeth and tail research in birds; sorry for the lack of links directly
to the journal articles), one can assume that in the mid-term, modern
molecular biology may elucidate and activate some of these genes.
Aside from being a compelling piece of evidence for evolution (well
needed in some parts of the world right now!), this would help us
understand developmental embyology, give greater insights into the
mechanisms of evolution, and most importantly, be insanely cool.

No. You mistake the nature of the experiments you cite. These are not the reactivation of long-dormant genes. If there were any long-dormant genes, they would long ago have mutated out of recognition because selection wouldn't have conserved them, there being no selection on dormant genes. Instead, these were genes that still have functions in living chickens, but are activated at different times and/or different places than in their ancestors. If you activate them in the ancestral times/places, you get ancestral morphologies. There are no fossil genes in the chicken.

With scientist currently working of the molecular biological
techniques required to 1) halt the loss and fusion of the 15-17
vertebrae visible in the embryo into the Pygostyle (bird version of
the coccyx) to from a tail, 2) induce the development of teeth, and 3)
reengineer the wings into clawed appendages. All three of these
projects seem to be making good progress, and all involve minimal
changes in the DNA the subject organism, the domesticated chicken
Gallus gallus.

The chicken is the best possible organism to use in the proposed
project; it is easily available in a wide variety of breeds, its eggs
are applicable to many standard scientific methods in embryology, any
techniques discussed in the previous paragraph could be immediately
applied, and most importantly, it is one of the handful of organisms
with a fully sequenced genome.

So, I propose to in parallel to the scientific research currently
underway, a seperate project is undertaken to breed in raptor-like
characteristics in domesticated chickens, that can be latter combined
with the already mentioned scientific techniques to generate a
dinosaur-like phenotype. My suggestion would be to 1) breed back the
chest musculature and pectoral girdle, and aim to breed forward the
shoulder blades to a more primative raptor form. 2) aim to breed up
the leg scales to cover the entire body (the reverse has already been
done, the the naked neck chicken breed to be completely featherless,
see: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2307-featherless-chicken-creates-a-flap.html).
Further breeding aims may include breeding to a more raptor like
pelvis, and for head morphology, however, this will probably only be
possible after the development of the tail and teeth reseach, as these
change will most probable affect the shape of the head and the animals
balance, so premature breeding will be wasted.

Parts of this might actually be feasible. Though you would get merely a simulation of an extinct raptor, not a real raptor nor any real raptor genome. You'd just have a weird-looking chicken that resembled a primitive theropod.

Note, however, that a scaled body would not be accurate, since the theropods you are trying to simulate were feathered.

So, sorry for the long post, but I hope you found it interesting!
please post any comments suggestions or advice!

D.
.

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