Berkeley Scientists Plan To 'Jurassic Park' Some Extinct Pigeons Back To Life 209
phenopticon writes "Researchers at Berkeley are attempting to revive the extinct passenger pigeon in order to set up a remote island theme park full of resurrected semi-modern extinct animals. (Well, maybe not that last part.) Quoting: 'About 1,500 passenger pigeons inhabit museum collections. They are all that's left of a species once perceived as a limitless resource. The birds were shipped in boxcars by the tons, sold as meat for 31 cents per dozen, and plucked for mattress feathers. But in a mere 25 years, the population shrank from billions to thousands as commercial hunters decimated nesting flocks. Martha, the last living bird, took her place under museum glass in 1914. ... Ben Novak doesn't believe the story should end there. The 26-year-old genetics student is convinced that new technology can bring the passenger pigeon back to life. "This whole idea that extinction is forever is just nonsense," he says. Novak spent the last five years working to decipher the bird's genes, and now he has put his graduate studies on hold to pursue a goal he'd once described in a junior high school fair presentation: de-extinction. ... Using next-generation sequencing, scientists identified the passenger pigeon's closest living relative: Patagioenas fasciata, the ubiquitous band-tailed pigeon of the American west. This was an important step. The short, mangled DNA fragments from the museums' passenger pigeons don't overlap enough for a computer to reassemble them, but the modern band-tailed pigeon genome could serve as a scaffold. Mapping passenger pigeon fragments onto the band-tailed sequence would suggest their original order."
And after the pigeons get loose and take over.... (Score:5, Funny)
what could go wrong? (Score:0, Funny)
GMOs released into the wild is a very bad thing. It is impossible to predict the ramifications of this.
While I'd like to restore an extinct species, this sort of thing is outright irresponsible.
Re:And after the pigeons get loose and take over.. (Score:5, Funny)
Don't be silly, nothing like that could happen - the new birds will be engineered to make them unable to produce Lysine, so they'll be dependent upon Lysine supplements from their keepers. Stop feeding them Lysine and the bio-engineered birds will die. Easy-peasy. What could go wrong?
Nifty! (Score:5, Funny)
Okay, I've read this book / seen this movie and know how this turns out so I've got a checklist for when extinct pigeons inevitably become terror-pigeons.
( ) Train young child on Unix
( ) Use old fashioned door knobs
( ) Get several big guns and don't store them in another building
( ) Make sure vehicles are ICE and not electric
( ) Redundant computer systems are good. You don't have good enough backups.
( ) Happy computer administrators are important when hosting terror critters. Make admins happy.
( ) The guy with the military training and the lawyer are always the first victims, get to know one of each so that you have warning
( ) Outhouses are bad
( ) Big thick steel doors are your friend
( ) Things can go wrong, that's what the lawyer and military training guys are for
( ) Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. Add more power to Jeep.
What do you get... (Score:4, Funny)
Q: What do you get when you revive an extinct species of giant pig [wikipedia.org]?
A: Jurassic pork
OK, I'll get my coat.
Re:Time frame (Score:5, Funny)
The last Pyrenean ibex (also called a bucardo) died in 2000
...yet there's a media panic if the supply of Twinkies looks like it's in danger.
Priorities, people.
Holy shit! I didn't know about this. So we've finally hunted the Twinkies into extinction? How may breeding pairs of Twinkies are left?
Re:Unintended consequences (Score:3, Funny)
Its easy to do (Score:5, Funny)
Inject the extinct DNA into a goat, milk the goat, distill the milk to get some stem cells of the extinct species out of it, put the stem cells into the kidneys of a mouse, clone the mouse 526 times, kill the mice, put them all in a BlendTec blender and whiz it for a bit, feed the muck to some chickens who will eventually hatch the extinct pigeons, market a new line of extra crispy "chicken" at KFC.
I mean is so freakin obvious how to do this kind of stuff I am not sure why we don't revive all extinct species in this way.
Re:And after the pigeons get loose and take over.. (Score:2, Funny)
John Conure will teach us how to beat them.
Re:And after the pigeons get loose and take over.. (Score:5, Funny)
Don't be silly, nothing like that could happen - the new birds will be engineered to make them unable to produce Lysine, so they'll be dependent upon Lysine supplements from their keepers. Stop feeding them Lysine and the bio-engineered birds will die. Easy-peasy. What could go wrong?
That's why Passenger Pigeons are the perfect choice. Clone a badass motherfucker, like a dinosaur, back to life, and any failure of the failsafes(which never are) makes you carnivore food.
Clone a dumb bird that suffered hundreds of millions of casualties against humans armed with 18th century technology? No problem. What're they going to do, lame you to death?
Re:Here's how it all goes down... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:what could go wrong? (Score:4, Funny)
" I think bridges and building are in more danger."
Thank god you're not a statue.
Don't Blink.
Re:what could go wrong? (Score:4, Funny)
AWESOME (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, yes, yes, OH GOD YES!
I've been wanting to eat one of these birds for DECADES! A bird so tasty, we hunted it to extinction!
There are recipes I wanted to try! Pies and stews and just cooked in the oven. They should do a kickstarter, I'd kick in!
Re:And after the pigeons get loose and take over.. (Score:5, Funny)
I've seen this one on SyFy. The scientists accidentally mix in their DNA with the pigeon DNA and we get a ruthless bird-beast that kills with bird-flu contaminated venom. Starring that guy in that show you used to watch 15 years ago and a hot 22 year old wannabe actress the producer is fucking.
Re:And after the pigeons get loose and take over.. (Score:5, Funny)
Holy shit I WAS making that up!