• Question: Could you get DNA from an exctinct species like a dodo if you found the body and then clone it to make a real life dodo? If so, how much would the process cost?

    Asked by fc12carter12 to Claire, Joanna, Kapila, Renata, Suzanne on 23 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Renata Medeiros

      Renata Medeiros answered on 23 Jun 2013:

      This is a very interesting question and a complicated one. In theory it should be possible and scientists are actually trying to do it at this very moment! The problem is that cloning animals isn’t all that easy: Dolly the sheep, the first cloned animal to be born, was the only one to survive out of almost 300 cloned cells. I am not sure about the cost but it certainly isn’t cheap! So it might take a while before we see a dodo again but I am convinced that it will happen at some point.
      The issue is: where are we going to put all the animals we bring back to life? In most cases their environment has changed and suddenly putting an extinct species back into it could have very bad consequences to other species. To avoid that, not very long ago, some scientists from Japan already thought of the idea of creating a Jurassic Park for all extinct species, just like in the movie (though I don’t think dinosaurs will be a possibility as finding good dinosaur DNA is almost impossible).
      We could also use cloning as a way of stopping species from being extinct. Although we could learn a lot from bringing extinct species back to life, in my opinion, we should worry more about saving those that we still haven’t destroyed before thinking of amusing ourselves in Jurassic Parks!

    • Photo: Claire El Mouden

      Claire El Mouden answered on 25 Jun 2013:

      Have you seen the film jurassic park? In theory, in the future that sort of thing might be possible. If the complete genome of the extinct species still exists, and there is a species currently alive that is similar enough so that a female of that species could be made pregnant with the implanted artificial egg, then in theory yes. However, there are lots of challenges. First, getting the complete DNA is not easy….they are trying it for mammoths and dodos. Inserting the DNA into an egg is the next step (you remove the DNA that is there and then replace it with the DNA you want). It’s not clear this step would work, as the egg would be of a different (but related) species e.g. For a mammoth, I guess they would use an elephant’s egg. The next challenge is to get an animal pregnant with that egg….and that will be difficult as the mother will probably try to reject the egg if it does not appear to be healthy. So miscarriage will be a big problem. Assuming the embryo does grow and the mother gives birth, there is a risk that baby will have deformities or will develop problems like cancer, that comes from the DNA not being perfect….so we are a very long way away from doing this….as there are scientific challenges, but more importantly big ethical questions too. Is it right to ‘play god’ like this and bring back extinct animals? Is it right to create a baby animal like this that may be sick? These are not questions scientists alone should answer – the whole of society needs to join in on such conversations….what do you think?

Comments