Re: Breeding more Dinosaur-like Chickens feasible in mid-term?
- From: Dr Mephesto <dnhkng@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 01:29:30 -0800 (PST)
Thanks for the thought out reply!
just a couple of comments:
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.
While its true that the project I mentioned themselves are not aimed
at the recovery of long dormant genes, they aim to simulate their
function; for example, there must have been a regulatory element to
activate the growth of the embryonic tail, something that is now
missing in modern birds. Also, there are ways to recreate long dormant
genes; such as inference from multiple decendants of the target
organism (http://icb.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/
43/4/500), and there is no reason to think that this approach might
not also be applicable to control elements, although theres aren't to
many theropod decendants left to analyse! Also, although very
unlikely, there is the possibilty that fragment of dinosaur dna might
be recovered inside dinosaur bones, although the chance that this is
discovered, and that it contains that required genes and control
elements is vanishingly small. But either way, that purpose of the
project is to create a dinosaur-like chicken, not to do the
impossible.
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.
As mentioned above, and in the title, the project is to create a
simulation! A dinosaur-like chicken. And although you suggest weird
looking, I might suggest awesome looking. Of course you are right
about the feathers, I believe the current opinion is that t-rex had
feathers as an adolescent; I just think scales are cooler :)
Does anyone have even a vague idea on how many generation of selective
breeding it would take to accomplish this kind of project? I am
refering to the wing and shoulder relocation and feather replacement?
And if not scales, does anyone have a good reference to the morphology
of raptor feathers?
.
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