The recently released movie “Jurassic World” stars a
fictitious chicken-based dinosaur called the Indominous Rex that was created in a lab. Scientist claim ‘Jurassic
World’ dinosaurs might not be far from real. Finding intact dinosaur DNA from
fossils is highly unlikely, as the DNA in cells starts to come apart once the
cell dies. However, dinosaur DNA is much more easily available than most people
might think. Chickens and birds carry big chunks of dinosaur DNA than actual
fossils. Alternation with chicken and bird DNA could possibly create what could
be a miniature version of a dinosaur. Researchers from Yale and Harvard
recently engineered a bird’s beak into a dinosaur looking mouth. However other
body parts still need to be worked on, such as turning the wings back into arms
and hands. This research is not only just for fun, but it can be a useful tool
in being able to learn how to properly switch genes on and off which can be
applied in the medical and nutritional fields.
This article was extremely interesting to read.
Being able to alter chicken DNA into creating a miniature dinosaur seems too
good to be true, however this article showed me that is not the case. I remember
previously learning how fossilized mosquitoes could contain dinosaur DNA in the
blood and be used to genetically engineer a dinosaur, however this might be too
difficult to accomplish as DNA begins to fall apart once the cell dies. It
seems as if the next few decades will be an interesting timeline for genetic
breakthroughs.
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