Cloning Endangered Species

JackMonkey writes "As SFGate.com reports, scientists have successfully cloned an endangered species. "The clone -- a cattlelike creature known as a Javan banteng, native to Asian jungles -- was grown from a single skin cell taken from a captive banteng before it died in 1980." Maybe Jurassic Park isn't too far away after all." See our previous cloning story also.

Quick!

[KDan]

Somebody clone a record company executive before they die out!

Daniel

Speaking of Jurassic Park

[nocomment]

Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.
- Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park

We are witnessing the end of the scietific era. Science, like other outmoded systems, is destroying itself. As it gains power, it proves itself incapable of handling that power. Because things are going very fast now. Fifty years ago, everyone was gaga over the atomic bomb. That was power. No one could imagine anything more. Yet, a bare decade after the bomb, we

Re:Speaking of Jurassic Park

[PD]

Ah yes. Quoting from bad Spielberg movies is a terrific form of argumentation.

Remember kiddies, UNIX is better than Windows, because it's recognizable to 9 out of 10 annoying sidekick child actors badly in need of an artificial plot device!

Re:Speaking of Jurassic Park

[nocomment]

Ah yes. Quoting from bad Spielberg movies is a terrific form of argumentation.

I wasn't, I was quoting a good Michael Crighton book. I think Mike (I can call you Mike right Mr Crighton?) has a lot of interesting quotes on the state of science and the drive of those scientists to do what they perhaps should not. I admit though, I am a bit of a hypocrite as the woolly mammoth cloning project [cnn.com] really interests me.

Re:Speaking of Jurassic Park

[PD]

The problem with you quoting a Michael Crighton book instead of a Spielberg movie is that it doesn't set anyone else up to follow with a lame post about the girl who knows UNIX. So, I used artistic license.

Re:Speaking of Jurassic Park

[barakn]

#1, it's Crichton. #2, I read Jurassic Park long before it became a movie. I thought the science in it was extremely weak. In fact Jurassic Park convinced me that Crichton had stopped writing novels and was now selling screen plays masquerading as books. The "science" in Jurassic Park was merely a plot device to allow dinosaurs to run around chomping people: great Hollywood fodder.

Re:Speaking of Jurassic Park

[schmink182]

I read Jurassic Park long before it became a movie.
Great.

The "science" in Jurassic Park was merely a plot device to allow dinosaurs to run around chomping people: great Hollywood fodder.
Or maybe it's a stepping stone to get to the ethical question of whether bringing back things from the past is a Good Thing. Not everyone is a sellout, some people care about humanity and nature.

Re:Speaking of Jurassic Park

[dnahelix]

didn't stop to think if they should.

...clone a bunch of dinosaurs!

Imagine the possibilities...

[infernalC]

Now that we have the ability to clone animals who are endangered whilst destroyoing the habitat they live in, we can let our consciences be at ease, because even though they have no place left to live, they exist.

Next month's manager special: the McBateng (with special sauce, of course).

Repopulating Extinct Species ... NOT

[mattsucks]

Several friends have picked up on this story and are all excited that now we can bring back extinct species. The dodo, ivory-billed woodpecker, etc etc and so on. I had to explain to them that for any species to survive, IN THE WILD, there must be a population of sufficient size and more importantly sufficient genetic diversity. We can clone 1000 dodo's (insert politician joke here) but it will still only be ONE dodo. Not to mention that pretty much all the dodo's natural habitat is gone gone gone .. where will they live? The suburbs?

If all we want is to have a couple of living specimens around to look at, cloning will be fine. Anyone expecting to use cloning to re-introduce extinct species to the wild is fooling themselves.

In addition....

[spotted_dolphin]

1000 dodos of the same sex isn't going to do a lot for the population in the long run. Even dozens of each sex will cause problems; purebred dogs usually have some sort of genetic disorder because not enough genetic variation in the gene pool has led to bad genes being paired together.

Genetic diversity.

[Christopher Thomas]

I had to explain to them that for any species to survive, IN THE WILD, there must be a population of sufficient size and more importantly sufficient genetic diversity. We can clone 1000 dodo's (insert politician joke here) but it will still only be ONE dodo.

I've heard about the 50/500 rule, but I still don't quite understand why having a starting population with identical genes is a death sentence.

As long as the original genes were good, none of the first generation will have crippling deficiencies. Yes,

Re:Genetic diversity.

[Vellmont]

I think what you're missing is that "good" genes are a moving target. Nature is really a battle between species, and if something else finds a chink in your armour, you're dead. If all members of a species have the same genetic makeup, they're all vulnerable to the same things. For instance, a disease might take out the entire population since the species wouldn't have enough genetic diversity for enough members to survive. Farmers that raise mono-crops see this all the time. There's a certain species

Re:Genetic diversity.

[zenyu]

There's a certain species of Apple (I think it's the Golden Delicious) that originates from a single plant found in the US many years ago.

All the apples you eat are clones. Apples "go to seed." If you plant apple seeds, 99.999% of them will be inedible. But, apples actually provide a bit of a clue here. All the popular apples except for the Granny Smith got that way because they were both hardy and sweet. Today they are still sweet, but are the least hardy things we grow. We have to absolutely bathe them

I think the big fly in that ointment...

[leonbrooks]

...is that critters have more than one gene, and they are often randomly mixed/expressed at mating. This means that selecting for one good feature may mean selecting against several other good features. Your only hope is to start with samples from lots of the animal, so expect Axel Heiburg Island [upenn.edu] to become a very busy place.

There is also some design input from the support machinery in and surrounding the nucleus, which means that your host animal is going to have an impact too. Your cloned critter won't be

Re:Genetic diversity.

[dalek_killer]

Having a small population with the same of good genes only goes so far, you also have to take into account recessive genes as well. and with in a small population these recessive gene can become the dominate gene, and here is where you can run in to problem. One of the biggest is an increase of birth defects, other hereditary disease, and a shortaning of life expecance. I only know of one case that a single species that is till around to day that came back from extinction from a single pregnant female. Bu

The reason the last one died in 1980...

[Jethro73]

...is because there were a bunch of scientists poking, prodding, and stealing its skin cells. :)

Seriously, though. I agree with some of the above posters. There is a reason the animals are no longer with us. And one can argue that it was humans that caused the extinction in the first place, and it was therefore our fault. However, the last time I checked, humans were part of the animal kingdom. Drawing off that fact, it becomes easy to argue that any forces we exerted on species were natural, albeit n

A better use

[BortQ]

With an clone army of RMSs GNU would be unstoppable!!!

Re:A better use

[hashwolf]

RMS/GNU not yet extinct.

Preservation of the species

[leonbrooks]

In order to do Jurassic Park things, you need intact DNA, and DNA is extremely frail. On does wonder about conditions of interment that can somehow preserve intact DNA across sixty-plus million years, when the best technology we have wouldn't do much better than a few tens of thousands of years in the best of circumstances.

Long-term survival?

[jpop32]

With as little formal education in genetics as I have (none, that is :-)), I'm compelled to ask:

Would cloned animals really have a chance of prolonging the life of the species?

As far as I know, species need genetic diversity to survive. It is proven that a herd/flock/community that is mostly inbred has a much higher chance of developing illnesses, being susceptible to hereditary disesases and genetic deformations.

From that I extrapolate that a species based on a _single_ copy of DNA is highly unlikely to

Re:Long-term survival?

[soren.harward]

Would cloned animals really have a chance of prolonging the life of the species?

Not very likely, because basically what you're getting is a 100% inbred population. You may be able to get a couple of generations out of the species if you're careful (like keeping them locked up in a zoo), but in the wild, a species thrives on its genetic diversity. If you have a totally heterogenous gene pool, then other than random mutation (which is more often deleterious than beneficial), you have no chance for evolut

Re:Long-term survival?

[gene_tailor]

>Would cloned animals really have a chance of prolonging the life of the species?

Well, if we are talking about starting with an extinct species, it doesn't seem likely (at least given current techniques and success rates) we can revive enough variation for the species to be viable in the longer term. Certainly trying to re-start a species from one individual alone is doomed, because there is no genetic diversity to deal with adverse conditions, as you point out. However, in this case of the bentang, the