Return of the Dire Wolf

racecar

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What do special about it sounds like a new breed of dogs ? They a genetically modified will probably have some health issue like certain breeds of dogs ?
 

Taiso

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We got Dire Wolves back before we got the next book in A Song of Ice and Fire.

George R.R. Martin, meet Dunning-Kreuger.
 

NeoSneth

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From what I understand they are basically grey wolves with hints of dire wolf DNA.

Not sure I would call that de-extinct…

It's 100% this. They are making animals that phenotypically look like another animal, but they are not doing anything like jurassic park.
This is essentially a funding ploy as they make claims of doing this with extinct animals. You'll just get a hairy elephant instead of a Mammoth.
 

BeefFieri

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It's 100% this. They are making animals that phenotypically look like another animal, but they are not doing anything like jurassic park.
This is essentially a funding ploy as they make claims of doing this with extinct animals. You'll just get a hairy elephant instead of a Mammoth.

So I'm not knowledgable about this area of science at all, but I know you are (or maybe I'm remembering wrong).

It's obvious they're not really "de-extincting" species and just splicing in genes to existing animals. I was under the impression that the technology behind these "dire wolves" and "mammoths" would be useful for preserving genomes for the future as climate change wrecks Earth's biodiversity. Any thoughts on that? Or is it all just a show for publicity?

EDIT: Sort of like the animal equivalent of the Svalbard Seed Vault.^
 

NeoSneth

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So I'm not knowledgable about this area of science at all, but I know you are (or maybe I'm remembering wrong).

It's obvious they're not really "de-extincting" species and just splicing in genes to existing animals. I was under the impression that the technology behind these "dire wolves" and "mammoths" would be useful for preserving genomes for the future as climate change wrecks Earth's biodiversity. Any thoughts on that? Or is it all just a show for publicity?

EDIT: Sort of like the animal equivalent of the Svalbard Seed Vault.^

You got it. They take "traits most commonly associated with" these animals. So they make imitations but the vast majority of the DNA is still not of the extinct animal. I don't work in gene editing, but I do work in genomics. Maybe you could argue the techniques they learn from these projects can be applied to actual resurrections decades later. They have George Church's name attached with them which used to carry a lot of weight. He's been at this for a long time, but that's where I learned it's just mimicry.
 

Moob Butter

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By no means I’m a biologist but if 99.5% of Dire Wolf DNA is the same as Grey Wolf, then trying to patch that 0.5% difference from Dire Wolf bones does sound a lot like Jurassic Park (the book version, which goes a lot more into the Science than the film) and arguably does that mean we ‘have’ brought the Dire Wolf back? It probably depends on how much of that different 0.5% is actually recoverable from bones.

Edit - potentially some good can come of this if we reintroduce species which we fucked up, like George the Giant Pinta Tortoise who was the only one of his species left as goats introduced by humans had destroyed his natural habitat. He died in 2012, I imagine some of his tissue and DNA was kept.

 
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SML

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Secretary of the Interior says that it's time to innovate and make this designer dog tech the "bedrock" of conservation.
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NeoSneth

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I mean why not, we have a complete dodo bird in a museum. Make the name change a condition of the funding it would take.


Don't get too focused on %match and similarity of DNA. If you take a chimp, and make it hairless and upright, it doesn't become a human.
Over 5% of your DNA is endogenous retroviral. You can get real screwy if you think the genome in terms of percentages.
 

Moob Butter

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If you take a chimp, and make it hairless and upright, it doesn't become a human.

I dunno mate haven’t you been on this website longer than I have? Amazing what passes for human.

PS - Jokes aside I see your point.
 

Takumaji

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"The Dire Wolf revival carries profound cultural significance as it embodies strength and courage that is deeply encoded within the DNA of American identity and tribal heritage".

That gives me the crawlies.

Yeah, let's make a dollar with fucking around with extinct DNA, sounds like a grand idea.
 

Taiso

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*laughs in Ian Malcolm
 
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