#Genetic Engineering

[curlyburp]

SO THEY MADE WOOLY MICE AND I LOVE THEM

[archiarthur]

[fiftysevenacademics]

So what have we learned? A charming rodent can be one of the most powerful tools in a technosavior's pocket. As Nature reported, Colossal is now valued at $10 billion. And what has Colossal produced so far? A hairy mouse that kind of already exists, and a slew of press releases on plans to de-extinct not just mammoths, but also animals like dodos and thylacines. The announcement of the woolly mouse will no doubt rake in even more capital, which was presumably the point and which will probably benefit its investors more than it will a putative, chimerical mammoth. When a company trying to sell itself calls something a "breakthrough," you don't have to believe them.

Gentle Tumblrfolk, I know we're all desperate for good news and that we all love cute, fluffy critters. But this "mammoth mouse" thing is absolute flim flam.

Please click and read the linked article. Sabrina Imbler (who is a great science journalist) does an excellent job explaining how science journalism works nowadays (unfortunately), and how almost no one paid attention to Nature's news story on it, which is what good journalism should be doing for a sensational claim like this.

[0straycat0]

I love gay peple…

[epitome-the-burnkid-viii]

[randybutternubber]

The whole “de extinction of the dire wolf” makes me SO MAD.

It is not a dire wolf. They just fucked with a grey wolf’s genome in like 20 different places. They aren’t even in the same genus.

Iirc They also haven’t stated what studies/info they used in order to determine what parts they changed. This company is looking for investors and is purposefully misleading the public.

I don’t even want to think about what health issues these poor animals could have in the future. Heart issues, arthritis, blindness, etc.

chances are once people forget about them they’ll be put down because of health issues or something similar. They aren’t dire wolves, they’re just grey wolves that have been genetically altered to fit the public perception of what a dire wolf is. They literally are made to look like the wolves in game of thrones, and named like them too.

47 failures and 3 successes, I seriously hope most of them died in utero.

We should be investing money into the conservation of these animals, not just exploiting and genetically twisting them for no good reason.

Do not let them do this shit with elephants.

Elephants need all the support they can get to keep their species alive as it is. Elephants also have a crazy long gestation period. They used domestic dogs to carry the wolves, idk if there’s a surrogate animal they can use for elephants.

These animals will likely live miserable lives and die young.

I’m not against genetic engineering, I’m against lying to people and genetically changing organisms purely for profit without caring of the consequences that could arise or doing so or altering organisms irresponsibly.

They can study these things while the animals are in utero. These wolves should have never come to term. This is NOT a viable method of de extinction.

Im super sick so im sorry if this rant sounds insane but omfg do not let them create the most mid Paleozoic park filled with the most miserable ass animals ever.

[rebeccathenaturalist]

De-Extinction and Dire Wolves: Should We Clone Extinct Animals?

This article originally appeared on my website at https://rebeccalexa.com/de-extinction-and-dire-wolves-should-we-clone-extinct-animals/

My social media feeds this week have been full of headlines about how a trio of genetically engineered dire wolves are the newest advance in the quest to clone extinct animals. The short version is that researchers from Colossal Biosciences altered fourteen genes in the gray wolf (Canis lupus) genome to resemble genes taken from dire wolf (Aenocyon dirus) fossils. The DNA was then inserted into denucleated domestic dog (Canis familiaris) egg cells which were then implanted in domestic dog surrogates.

Romulus and Remus, two of Colossal Bioscience’s genetically engineered “dire” wolves.

Three of these eggs resulted in viable pups. Romulus and Remus are six months old, while Khaleesi is two months. The pups are white-furred, heavier-boned than gray wolves, and show wolf-like wariness of humans. But are they true dire wolves?

That’s the real question. You can add in genes from a dire wolf to an extant canid, but that doesn’t make them identical to the extinct species. Moreover, dire wolves are not as closely related to gray wolves as was previously thought; they were recently reassigned to a new genus that reflects their closer resemblance to modern-day jackals. There really isn’t a good analogue to them alive today, particularly when compared to the aurochs, another extinct species, and its domestic cattle descendants.

Is this really a good idea? Find out my thoughts on the matter under the cut!

There have been attempts to backbreed domestic cattle (Bos taurus) to aurochs (Bos primigenius), which went extinct a mere 400 years ago. Heck cattle and the Tauros programme are two examples of efforts to create cattle that more closely resemble their wild forebears. Aurochs backbreeding involves choosing animals that physically resemble the extinct animals, such as having longer faces and legs, curled horns, and dark coloration with a white muzzle. However, just as you can’t make a gray wolf by breeding wolf-like domestic dogs, you can’t make a true aurochs with domesticated cattle.

This gets us into phenotype (appearance and other physical characteristics) vs. genotype (genetic material). We don’t know exactly what dire wolves looked like, beyond their preserved bones, and possibly the genes that gave the three pups their thick, white pelage. We also don’t know how they behaved, and there are no living dire wolves to teach the pups the ways of their world. While we can make some educated guesses based on the behaviors of extant social canids like gray wolves and African painted dogs (Lycaon pictus), we can’t say with full certainty that dire wolves behaved the same way.

Let’s say we could clone extinct animals and somehow make a genotypically perfect dire wolf. The youngest reliably dated dire wolf remains are from about 10,000 years ago. This may seem like a relatively short time, and from a geological perspective it is. But a lot can happen in that time biologically and ecologically–for example, mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) only appeared as a distinct species 10,000 years ago from hybridization of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) and black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus). And while human overhunting likely contributed to the extinction of many species of megafauna at the end of the last ice age 11,000-12,000 years ago, climate change was almost certainly a major factor as well. Given that the planet is heating up even more rapidly due to anthropogenic climate change, would it even be ethical to bring these cold-weather animals back under current conditions?

And, finally, would they still fulfill the same ecological role that they did thousands of years ago? Plains bison (Bison bison bison) and domestic cattle may be related, and share some behaviors, but cattle absolutely are not good replacements for bison. Their grazing patterns and migratory tendencies vary significantly, as does the makeup of their manure, all of which have impacts on local ecology. Some people argue that feral domestic horses (Equus caballus) belong in North America because they may fill a niche left when the last native North American horse, Equus occidentalis, went extinct along with other ice age megafauna. However, once again the landscape has changed significantly in 12,000 years, and niches have shifted in intervening millennia, and so domesticated horses are not the perfect replacement for their extinct counterparts.

This isn’t even getting into the ethics of bringing back an extinct species when there’s no place set for them in the wild. The debate over de-extinction overshadows the grim reality that we are still chewing up wild habitat at unprecedented rates, putting an increasing number of species at risk of extinction–or driving them entirely over the edge. It’s easier to get excited about sexy headlines featuring Jurassic Park-style wild science than the ongoing fight to not only put the brakes on environmental destruction–no small feat–but repair the damage.

All of which is to say while it’s interesting to see the genetic engineering advances represented by the three “dire wolves” now revealed to the world, it doesn’t mean that we’ve brought back an entire extinct species. And really, is the best tactic right now to clone extinct animals? While we could potentially use this technology to clone critically endangered species and reinject preserved DNA from long-dead individuals into the active gene pool, it’s very resource-intensive. And none of this is as important as preserving the habitats that these rare species need to survive. Eye-catching headlines about dire wolves may help raise awareness and funding, but they are not a replacement for the ongoing hard work of conservation.

Did you enjoy this post? Consider preordering my book The Everyday Naturalist, taking one of my online foraging and natural history classes or hiring me for a guided nature tour, or checking out my other articles! You can even buy me a coffee here!

[scipunk]

Mardock Scramble: The First Compression (2010)

[mister-nonsense]

Plays More Gun, romantically

[mindblowingscience]

Scientists from Vilnius University's (VU) Life Sciences Center (LSC) have discovered a unique way for cells to silence specific genes without cutting DNA. This research, led by Prof. Patrick Pausch and published in the journal Nature Communications, reveals a new way to silence genes that is akin to pressing a "pause" button on certain genetic instructions within cells. The research team, including doctoral student Rimvydė Čepaitė, Dr. Aistė Skorupskaitė, undergraduate Gintarė Žvejyte and Prof. Pausch at Vilnius University, working alongside an international team, uncovered how cells use a specific system to locate and silence unwanted DNA. This system, which could eventually enable safer gene modifications, shows promise for repairing faulty genes that cause diseases.

Continue Reading.

[thepastisalreadywritten]

In tandem with genetically engineering its three dire wolves, Colossal has cloned two litters of red wolves, the most critically endangered wolf in the world, as part of its overall goal of pairing conservation efforts with its de-extinction efforts.

The company, founded in 2021, has previously announced that it plans to bring back the woolly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger, and the dodo bird from extinction.

It says that its work on the dire wolf is a proof of technology.

“This massive milestone is the first of many coming examples demonstrating that our end-to-end de-extinction technology stack works,” says Lamm, who co-founded Colossal with Harvard geneticist Dr. George Church.

Colossal — which claims that it has now set the record for the most-ever genetic edits in a living species — says it plans to restore the dire wolf as a viable species and secure ecological preserves for it on Indigenous land in North America.

📹 AMAZlNGNATURE / X

🐺🥹🔊

[archiarthur]

Gay gay gay yaoi yaoi

1st picture inspiration: @twwizzlerr

[reasonsforhope]

"A company in France has developed genetically-enhanced houseplants that remove 30 times more indoor air pollutants than your normal ficus.

Paint, treated wood, household cleaners, insulation, unseen mold—there is a shopping list of things that can fill the air you breathe in your home with VOCs or volatile organic compounds. These include formaldehyde and other airborne substances that can cause inflammation and irritation in the body.

The best way to tackle this little-discussed private health problem is by keeping good outdoor airflow into your living spaces, but in the dog days of summer or the depths of a Maine winter, that might not be possible.

Houseplants can remove these pollutants from the air, and so the company Neoplants decided to make simple alterations to these species’ genetic makeup to supercharge this cleaning ability.

In particular, houseplants’ natural ability to absorb pollutants like formaldehyde relies on them storing them as toxins to be excreted later.

French scientists and Neoplants’ co-founders Lionel Mora and Patrick Torbey engineered a houseplant to convert them instead to plant matter. They also took aim at the natural microbiome of houseplants to enhance their ability to absorb and process VOCs as well.

The company’s first offering—the Neo P1—is a Devil’s ivy plant that sits on a custom-designed tall stand that both maximizes its air-cleaning properties and allows it to be watered far less often.

Initial testing, conducted by the Ecole Mines-Telecom of Lille University, shows that if you do choose to shell out the $179 for the Neo P1, it’s as if you were buying 30 houseplants. Of course, if you went for the budget route of 30 houseplants, you’d have to water them all.

The founders pointed out in an interview done with Forbes last year that once they settled on the species and fixed the winning genetic phenotype, the next part of the process was just raising plants, the same activity done in every nursery and florist in every town in Europe."

Deliveries for the P1 are estimated for August 2024.

-via Good News Network, November 6, 2023

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Note: I'm not a plant biologist, but if this works the way the company's white paper says it does, holy genetic engineering, Batman.

(Would love to hear thoughts from anyone who is a plant biologist or other relevant field!)

[0straycat0]

Cowboys….

[do-you-ship-it-polls]

Do you ship it?

happy memorial day wednesday

wait i forgot the reason: mad scientists who enable eachother (they match eachother's freak you could say) also the classic "mechanical vs biological" geniuses