De - extinctioninvolves bringing nonextant mintage back to life , a topic so spicy it start out an integral movie franchise as a wealthy enterpriser sought to create a dinosaur island in the much - lovedJurassic Park . The thought of First State - extinguishing has been toyed with throughout story , with species such as thewoolly mammothandthylacineboth being floated for the treatment .
Now it seems the dodo would be a competition as scientist have successfully sequenced the bird ’s entire genome . Not quite a dinosaur , but an ave would be a footfall in the right direction .
The achievement come up from a squad at the University of California , where professor of environmental science and evolutionary biota Beth Shapiro and colleagues have been working to try and map the dodo ’s genome for some clip . Previous effort using a specimen from Oxford , UK , were unsuccessful but a “ fantastic specimen ” from Denmark gifted them some sufficiently well - preserved DNA .
The dodo in head belong to the Natural History Museum of Copenhagen , and gave rise to a “ mellow - calibre , mellow - reportage , dodo genome which will before long be published , ” Shapiro enunciate , theNZ Heraldreports .
Potentially exciting news for fans of birds which really put the orb in borb , then , as when it amount to plump , plumed things the fogy was a doozy . Just short of 1 meter ( 3 pes ) , dodos were big - bootied birds with a comically curved pecker and slimly elongate cervix .
The name dodo comes from the Portuguese for “ fool ” which was a reference to their unfortunate fearlessness in the face of human hunters .
But enough background , it ’s prison term for the ultimate question …
Can we bring back the dodo?
Unfortunately , even armed with a full genome it would be very difficult to fetch back the dodo owing to the fact that it was a fowl .
" If I have a jail cell and it ’s living in a dish in the lab and I edit it so that it has a bit of dodo DNA how do I then metamorphose that cellphone into a whole exist breathing actual animal ? ” Shapiro said .
“ The way we can do this is to clone it , the same coming that was used to make ' Dolly the Sheep ' , but we do n’t know how to do that with birds because of the intricacy of their reproductive pathways . ”
harmonise to Shapiro , the baseless drive that is avian reproduction represents a “ really key technological vault in de - extinguishing , ” but one that many scientists are working to leap over . It ’s her opinion that the achievement is in reach , but we ’ve a way to go before book slate to Middle - to - Late - Triassic Park .
[ H / T : Telegraph ]
