Scientists to Resurrect Ancient Gene to Replay Evolution

[n2doc]

By Michael Schirber, Astrobiology Magazine
posted: 02 May 2009 11:09 am ET

The movie "Jurassic Park" was a lesson in how resurrecting extinct organisms can go awry. A new project plans to take a safer route: resurrect a single gene from an extinct species of bacteria. This tiny snippet of DNA will be implanted in modern-day bacteria, with the goal of seeing whether evolution can be replayed in the lab.

In previous work, paleogeneticist Eric Gaucher from the Georgia Institute of Technology and his colleagues reconstructed earlier forms of a common gene by computing the way different lineages diverged to create the bacterial family tree.

"It is a bit like what historical linguists do when they infer the spelling or pronunciation of an ancient word from its modern derivatives," Gaucher says. "Except, we are working with the DNA alphabet."

As part of NASA's Astrobiology: Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology program, Gaucher and Betul Kacar, also from Georgia Tech, now plan to plug one of their reconstructed genes in a modern organism's DNA.

more:

http://www.livescience.com/animals/090502-am-gene-resurrection.html

[Duer 157099]

1. This is ridiculous n/t

[OKNancy]

2. really?

sounds kind of interesting to me.. LOL - was was actually going to use the word "cool"

[Duer 157099]

6. Because, imho, it's a waste of research $$

It's a frikken foregone conclusion what the results will be!

Are they doing this to pander to the crazy "evolution-is-a-myth" idiots in the world?

That's why I think it's ridiculous.

[Posteritatis]

10. You don't have a clue what this is about, do you? (nt)

[Duer 157099]

11. I guess not - why don't you tell me? n/t

[Dogmudgeon]

3. Why ridiculous?

It sounds perfectly reasonable to me -- and not all that expensive, either.

They're not cloning dinosaurs. They're tracking how individual (if extinct) genes behave.

--d!

[Duer 157099]

8. see my reply above n/t

[tocqueville]

9. and fruit flies are pork

ask Sarah Palin

[tocqueville]

7. yeah everybody knows that evolution is a hoax

and nobody has ever been to the moon

[pleah]

4. Very interesting.

K&R

[MichiganVote]

5. Uh..oh...the origins of republicans uncovered. The horror....