Whither Jurassic Park?

So will the science of Jurassic Park remain within the realm of fiction, or will someday genetically engineered mammoths, dinosaurs, and trilobites again roam the Earth?

It is unscientific to use terms like “never” except in cases where the realization of a phenomenon would require violation of physical laws of nature, and in paleontology paradigms are often overturned by the discovery of a single, fortuitous fossil, so especially in paleontology is it unwise to use the term.

Michael Crichton’s books were best sellers because they were plausible science fiction—as were Jules Verne’s and Arthur C. Clarke’s imaginings of the future. Some of their visions have been realized, others have not. It is the “possibility of the possible” that attracts writers to science fiction, and scientists to science.

Photo credit: http://www.3dscience.com

DNA dream time

So how close are scientists to being able to clone a now-extinct species?

Ideally, scientists would start with a species that has recently gone extinct, and one for which we have tissue samples. Australia’s extinct Tasmanian tiger fits these criteria. The last-known captive animal died in 1936.

A team of scientists have inserted part of a bone-making gene from the Tasmanian tiger into a mouse embryo and found that it functioned properly. This marked the first time that DNA from an extinct species successfully induced a functional response in another living organism.

However, scientists are not making plans to exhibit a cloned Tasmanian tiger anytime soon. Through a gene-by-gene study scientists can hope to learn the functions of the genes from extinct species, but assembling an entire animal from fossil genetic material is still the realm of science fiction.

Reference: Pask, A. Behringer, R.R., and Renfree, M., 2008. Resurrection of DNA function In Vivo from an extinct genome. PloS One 3(5)

Photo credit: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/05/20/gallery/tasmanian-tiger-540x380.jpg