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by sklivvz1971
1208 days ago
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> Critics say that Colossal’s money would be better spent in protecting existing species Ah, ye old whataboutism canard... it seems to be forgetting that this technology would have an immense value by itself! > True de-extinction is nowhere near possible. I'm not sure I can parse the convoluted English here. Are we saying it's impossible? I see no evidence in the article that it is correct. Are we saying it's really hard? Sure, but no one claimed otherwise. I am not the kind of person that tends to have starry-eyed faith into any appealing idea, and perhaps it is truly hard to "resurrect" a dead species. However it seems to me that it's obviously doable at some level: Craig Venter has created a synthetic bacterium so I don't see why a particularly simple life form can't be "de-extincted". I realize though that multicellular organism are much harder and quite far away from our current capabilities, but impossible? I don't see why. |
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A species that has dwindled to about ten living individuals has a shallow gene pool.
Bringing in genes from recently deceased or preserved specimens could help deepen that pool.
It has happened that only one female of a species was known to be alive. The ability to put together a viable egg for her to bring to term would be the difference between extinction and survival.
We're also awfully mammal-centric. Frogs have already been de-extincted. The gastric-brooding frog was resurrected in 2013.
Compared to mammals it is relatively easy to transfer DNA around between the eggs of related oviparous species and there's no real reason we can't make a large-scale DNA bank for them, protecting the endangered birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians of the world.
These technologies are all part of one tech tree.