Frozen Mice Cloned

m0rphin3 writes "Japanese scientists have cloned mice whose bodies were frozen for as long as 16 years and said on Monday it may be possible to use the technique to resurrect mammoths and other extinct species. Could we finally see Jurassic Park become a reality, or perhaps use this for colonizing other galaxies?"

Comments

That juicy t-bone steak

[VincenzoRomano]

I had in the last BBQ would also need cloning!

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[Ethanol-fueled]

That's why this type of research needs to continue to push forward.

We could be eating fresh prime rib almost every day without worrying about ethical issues concerning the raising of animals in inhumane conditions, and we'd be cutting down on the methane as well as not having to pump our meat full of hormones and antibiotics. It's much easier to grow a mass of muscle cells and raise them to maturity than it would be to grow an entire animal from scratch. I'll gladly be a guinea pig as I don't care of the meat looks like a softball so long as it tastes good.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[CRCulver]

I've already seen much comment by fanatical vegans on the Internet that even meat from lab-grown cells is deplorable. Their reasoning is that even if no animal was actually killed, people have still not subdued that part of themselves that gets pleasure from eating animal flesh.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[Changa_MC]

I've already seen much comment by fanatical vegans on the Internet that even meat from lab-grown cells is deplorable.

But those are vegans. Us vegetarian-types would buy up lab-meat by the ton.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[Ethanol-fueled]

Many vegans have the righteous "anti-establishment" mentality while refusing to understand that humans are omnivores and have been engineered to eat meats and plants. We need plants for minerals and meats for amino acids.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[billcopc]

I think it'd be easier to kill all the hippies.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[sexconker]

Cruelty adds flavor.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[RulerOf]

I don't care of the meat looks like a softball so long as it tastes good.

A large contributor to flavor in beef (and I suspect many other meats) is the presence of the bone when it's cooked. Just ask your butcher.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[Greyfox]

I'll gladly be a guinea pig as I don't care of the meat looks like a softball so long as it tastes good.

I'm sure we'll find you to be both tasty and delicious.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[CrimsonAvenger]

We could be eating fresh prime rib almost every day without worrying about ethical issues concerning the raising of animals in inhumane conditions,

I've never found myself worrying about ethical issues when eating fresh prime rib. Except for the ones involving the ancestry of the cooks who don't know what the word "rare" means when ordering prime rib....

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[orclevegam]

A large contributor to flavor in beef (and I suspect many other meats) is the presence of the bone when it's cooked. Just ask your butcher.

Ok, add a second bone cloning vat next to the meat cloning vat and package them together. Problem solved.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[antifoidulus]

Yeah, but years of self-abuse have made their meat very tough, so why bother?

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[TubeSteak]

Their reasoning is that even if no animal was actually killed, people have still not subdued that part of themselves that gets pleasure from eating animal flesh.

So it's not enough that no animals would be killed?
You're actually not allowed to enjoy it?

Well shit, remember Pavalov's dogs?
We can do the exact opposite of that.

Negative reinforcement is easy as pie.
It wouldn't take much conditioning to get someone to vomit at the smell or taste of meat.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[Idiomatick]

You being a part of your species.... i fail to see your point. That aside i think alot of vegetarians still wouldn't eat meat out of habit/stubbornesss and they generally aren't too fond of the taste after a few years anyways.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[syrinx]

I'll gladly be a guinea pig as I don't care of the meat looks like a softball so long as it tastes good.

I'm sure we'll find you to be both tasty and delicious.

I've got a book that you might be interested in.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[binarylarry]

He's talking about growing just the meat/muscle in a vat.

There would be no "cow" just a vat of sweet, delicious cow flesh.

Mmmmmmmmm.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[Arthur B.]

The comments about veganism are stupid. This is not about growing food in a vat. It's hard to know how tasty a beef will be before eating it. Cloning dead beef which tasted very good is a serious area of research.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[mr_mischief]

You can clone just cells and tissues rather than whole organisms, although I think people are less likely to think of that as "cloning" in the news-worthy controversial sense. The cuts from cow muscle grown in a vat may be a little different from the cuts we know, but perhaps they'd be just as good.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[Cocoa Radix]

We can feed them to the remaining hippies we haven't gotten around to killing yet. We'll just tell them that it's soy, and, given the terrible texture and taste, they'll have no choice but to agree.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[Missing_dc]

That reminds me of this:

http://simulatedcomicproduct.com/2005/12/29/hamburgers/

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[adonoman]

I think he's stressing the point between being engineered (i.e. created) vs. evolving.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[Hatta]

It's much easier to grow a mass of muscle cells and raise them to maturity than it would be to grow an entire animal from scratch.

What makes you think so? Eukaryotic cell culture is pretty technically difficult work, and that's not even bothering with multiple types of cells like you'd find in muscle.

When you farm an animal, you benefit from millions of years of evolution designing the perfect environment to grow muscle mass. It's not going to be easy to replicate that in the lab.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[theaveng]

fanatical vegans... say that even if no animal was actually killed, people have still not subdued that part of themselves that gets pleasure from eating animal flesh.

Mmmm. Animal flesh. (drool). I wonder what Vegan tastes like?

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[adonoman]

They could be way better, since you can stress the muscles to exact amounts to create the ideal fat percentages and tenderness. With real cows they have the whole issue of actually having to support the infrastructure of a 1000 lb walking/breathing/eating animal.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[Ethanol-fueled]

I think parent is referring to the fat and connective tissue which binds the muscle to the bone. He's right, it's what gives many cuts of meat their rich, fatty flavor.

A lab-grown slab of pure muscle meat won't be as tasty as a dead-cow T-bone but it'll taste good enough and it'll be healthier to boot.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[hierophanta]

It's much easier to grow a mass of muscle cells and raise them to maturity than it would be to grow an entire animal from scratch.

FWIW-- i dont believe that is true. nature has been growing animals from scratch with little or no effort on our end for some time now.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[Greyfox]

Bwawhahah. That was tongue in cheek since it kind of read that way, but once we have meat vats what's really to prevent us from having any sort of meat? Bald eagle? Tiger? People? Why not, as long as you didn't have to kill anyone to get it? Hell you could clone your own cells into a meat vat and have a nice juicy steak of yourself!

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[orclevegam]

Well, presumably you'd need some kind of substrate to grow the meat on, so why not simply have the fat/connective tissues grown as well and bonded to the substrate. Solves two problems, how to attach the meat to the substrate, and lack of connective tissues effecting flavor.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[mr_mischief]

Part of the flavor of the meat is from the diet of the cattle and from the marrow in the bones, though. If you give the muscle the ideal nutrient mix for fast growth and sell it in isolation, then you have to weigh the tenderness and fat content against those factors. It should be possible, though. At least a steak from a vat, if anyone ever does produce such a thing commercially, should taste better than other vat options like yeast paste.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[Sloppy]

So it's like CGI porn for pedophiles? The atrocity is in yourself, not the act.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[Crudely_Indecent]

I think we should toss this cloned meat thing out the window and start eating free-range vegan.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[ShadowBlasko]

fanatical vegans... say that even if no animal was actually killed, people have still not subdued that part of themselves that gets pleasure from eating animal flesh.

Mmmm. Animal flesh. (drool). I wonder what Vegan tastes like?

Bitter. Very bitter.

Which is why I don't date them anymore. Just cant deal with the taste of vegan women.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[alta]

Yeah, and get mad human disease ;)

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[PacoCheezdom]

Actually, cloning dead beef is remarkably easy:

# ifconfig eth0 down hw ether 00:00:de:ad:be:ef
# ifconfig eth0 up


Of course, if you're cloning dead beef on a BSD machine or a mac, the syntax is a little different but it's the same idea. How to easily clone dead beef on a windows machine -- well that's still a serious area of research.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[MrNaz]

*He* might not have been engineered, but the cow he's eating was made better, faster, stronger...

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[Sloppy]

Sorry, not my position, was just trying to clarify theirs.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[Theolojin]

Mmmm. Animal flesh. (drool). I wonder what Vegan tastes like?

Rather like cat. Not as gamey as dog, and lighter in texture than squirrel. Similar to kobe beef, but not quite as much marbling, due to the lack of fat in their diet. Oh, and utterly *unlike* rabbit.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[maxume]

A vegan is a loathsome, sickly creature. I shudder at the thought of the taste of their flesh.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[Ironsides]

They have flesh? Any vegan I have seen looks to be just skin and bones.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[Ironsides]

How about I ask the cook? (aka myself) I prefer boneless steaks. No bones, still very tasty.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[Brain-Fu]

Any vegan I have seen looks to be just skin and bones.

To a large extent, the plants available in our grocery stores and/or restaurants have been grown in nutrient-depleted soil, as well as harvested too early and left to ripen on the truck (often with some chemical treatments made to replace the color).

The net effect is that our plants are less nutritious than our bodies expect. So, if someone completely rejects meat, it is hard to get the caloric content needed. True vegans must often eat *all the time* in order to get enough nutrition. It can make being a vegan very difficult.

As I understand, though, vegetarianism (by which I mean the inclusion of dairy products in the diet) is more popular than veganism, and solves that problem easily.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[mrops]

Besides the BBQ, we can finally rest the issue of global warming killing off various species. Dodo bird gone, no problem, we will just clone new ones. In fact, lets clone a few extra so I can have dodo meat on thanksgiving.

No animals were harmed while writing this comment.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[hjrnunes]

Maybe not every one on Slashdot are evolutionists but those that are, are, whether you like it or not, correct. At least they're as correct as they can be, since evolution by selection is pretty much the only theory that actually has some kind of proof to support it.

As a matter of fact, my screensaver actually implements a kind of evolution by selection algorithm. You can obviously believe in whatever you want but, please, don't say that we evolutionists are not correct. At least not until you have proof that we aren't.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[Ethanol-fueled]

Sigh. I'm glad to see that my comment in question now has a high score, but I did not mean to endorse a belief in intelligent design.

I strongly believe in evolution and used the term "engineering" out of reverence of a process, not to imply that some ghost fired up autocad and stamped humanity out of an injection-mold.

The engineering process is about design, true, but the vast majority is trying to get it right though a series of refinements over repeated iterations which sounds a lot more like evolution to me.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[AttillaTheNun]

Pig may taste like pumpkin pie, but you won't catch me eating the filthy motherf*cker.

Paraphrased, I'm too lazy to look up the exact quote.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[Jherico]

Their reasoning is that even if no animal was actually killed, people have still not subdued that part of themselves that gets pleasure from eating animal flesh.

That's a straw man argument.

Much better reasoning is nutrition drawn from meat still takes 10 times as much energy to produce as nutrition drawn from plants. i.e. you have to feed the equivalent of 10 loaves of bread to an animal in order to get an amount of meat equivalent to the nutritional value of 1 load of bread. Looked at another way, a given area of arable land that could keep 10 people alive with the crops it grows can only keep 1 person alive if its used as livestock feed instead. This isn't going to change just because meat is grown in a lab instead of a living animal. Most of that energy wasted is just going into generating the heat that warm blooded animals need to stay alive and that's going to be true for lab grown meat too.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[Taibhsear]

Unfortunately, you would also have to worry about one single virus that wipes out your entire beef source. Bio-diversity is a good thing. The more varieties of animal, the better off the species, and its predators, are.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[mqduck]

I think it's you who refuses to understand that vegans have ethical concerns about killing or exploiting living things. Of course they know that humans are omnivores. You seem to be taking the typical Slashdot "they disagree with me therefore they must be idiots" attitude.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[MrNiceguy_KS]

I also am to lazy to look up the exact quote, but I know it's "sewer rat", not "pig". Here's how I remember the exchange.

"Yeah, but bacon tastes *good*. Pork chops taste *good*."
"Hey, sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie, but I'll never know 'cause I ain't gonna eat the filthy motherf*cker."

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[triffid_98]

( http://homepage.uab.edu/nnobis/papers/least-harm.pdf )

There are 120 million ha of cropland harvested in the USA each year. If all of that land was used to produce crops to support a vegan diet, and if 15 animals of the field are killed per ha per year, then 15 × 120 million = 1800 million or 1.8 billion animals would be killed annually to produce a vegan diet for the USA.

I think it's you who refuses to understand that vegans have ethical concerns about killing or exploiting living things.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[TheGeniusIsOut]

As someone who works in R&D, I would have to agree with that description of the engineering process. It is indeed an evolution of sorts from an initial design to the final outcome, with adaptations made from revision to revision to better suit its operating evirons, improve power efficiencies and performance, new features added and obsolete functions removed or disabled.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[JoshuaZ]

That's not what this does. This only gives you clones of complete mice. The technology to grow muscle cells independently is a completely different issue and as of yet far beyond anything we can do. Moreover, the overlap between cloning research and meat-in-a-vat research is small.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[maxume]

There may be a nutrition problem for vegans, but it isn't calories (unless they have some sort of problem with eating potatoes, rice, wheat, etc., which all provide abundant calories).

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[mattack2]

Sheesh, I just went to imdb.com and searched for 'sewer rat' and found it.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110912/quotes

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[mqduck]

That neither makes any sense (I didn't click the link) nor has anything to do with my point. I never tried to defend the rightness or attack the wrongness of veganism.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[BarefootClown]

Same reason we shoot prairie dogs.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[philspear]

We wouldn't need to CLONE to do that, just figure out how to take a cow embryonic stem cell line and make it differentiate into organized muscle in a dish. We could just expand the bES cell lines as much as we needed. I think it's possible to get muscle cells from ES cells already, but last I heard they didn't organize into muscles, so it would be a bit like eating steak puree. They may have solved that little problem by now.

Of course, that might piss off vegetarians AND people opposed to stem cell research, but I think we'll win over some of them with 40 lb lean steaks in the shape of mount rushmore.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[DarrylKegger]

bbaaaaaahahhhhahahahahahaaaahahahahahahahahahahah!!! you have a small penis.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[DarrylKegger]

baaahahahahahahahahahaaaahhaha!! you have a small penis.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[joshrulzzatwork]

If you're serious about that (and not just +1 funny, +1 insightful, or -1 troll), then I say we desperately need them.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[badkarmadayaccount]

-1 Too Much Informative

The biggest question

[Overzeetop]

Who keeps dead mice in their freezer for 16 years? Remind me not to have the Brunswick stew at their house.

Re:The biggest question

[CannonballHead]

I was going to ask that. Either someone, 16 years ago, decided he wanted to try this, or it is sorta like the fish in the back of the freezer that you caught 20 years ago, don't want to eat, and don't want to throw away... (of course, I don't like fish in the first place)

Re:The biggest question

[piratesyarr]

I believe that you can buy frozen dead mice at some pet stores. They're TV dinners for snakes.

Re:The biggest question

[halcyon1234]

Who keeps dead mice in their freezer for 16 years?

What, you don't like micicles?

Re:The biggest question

[funfail]

They could just use the microwave to defreeze it as well, according to Day of the Tentacle walkthrough.

Re:The biggest question

[et764]

About 13 years or so ago, we were dissecting pig eyeballs at school. My friend and I decided it'd be cool to keep ours, so we cut it in half and each of us took one half home and stuck it in a freezer. Several years after that, I checked and the half an eye was still in the freezer, so I left it there. My family's moved since then, and presumably we cleaned out the freezer when that happened and the eye is no more, but my friend's family is still in the same place, so there may very well still be half an eye in his freezer.

Maybe we should thaw it out and clone it...

Re:The biggest question

[idontgno]

Snakes watch TV? In their living rooms? With really small really low TV trays? And amazingly tiny TV remotes?

/boggle

OK, I could see why they'd avoid the whole "sit-down dinner" thing; I'm not an insensitive clod and can sympathize that whole "can't sit, no legs" awkwardness. But c'mon, parked in front of the TV? That's almost as sad as newts choking down bites of fast food in their mother's basements during "AFK" moments in their favorite MMORPG.

Re:The biggest question

[Alpha Whisky]

I saved it in case I started getting sick from the bite.

After a while of not getting sick I was tempted for a while to see what it tasted like, never did. But meat is meat.

You do know that once you start getting symptoms from Rabies you have one choice, kill yourself now or suffer an agonising death later.

Reality vs Scifi

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting as we progress technology where it correlates with (hard boiled) science fiction and where it does not. We really are getting close to this stuff aren't we?

Or colonizing galaxies with mamoths?

[Anonymous Coward]

We use this technology to colonize other galaxies with giant wooly mamoths. That would be so cool.

Re:Or colonizing galaxies with mamoths?

[dogdick]

I concur, lets confuse the shit out of other intelligent life when they start visiting our solar system.

Re:Or colonizing galaxies with mamoths?

[Warll]

Check his comment history, he is a troll. Of course don't feel bad for laughing, it was a funny joke.

Re:Or colonizing galaxies with mamoths?

[Anonymatt]

Ooh, remember those great "How Things Work" (or whatever) books with the mammoth drawings all over?

Re:Or colonizing galaxies with mamoths?

[WK2]

That explains how million year old fossils ended up on a 6 thousand year old planet.

Re:Or colonizing galaxies with mamoths?

[city]

No, no, no, we need to use this technology responsibly. How about we reintroduce extinct species to their natural habitats. Let's start with sabre-tooth tigers in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area.

Re:Or colonizing galaxies with mamoths?

[Jarik C-Bol]

I *really* need to find and buy that book. it was great.

Re:Or colonizing galaxies with mamoths?

[eh2o]

Great idea. Too bad its already been done.

Hmmmm

[Andr T.]

Now that mice ice-cream factory I was planning will work _very_ well.

Re:Hmmmm

[khellendros1984]

You can market it as "Mice Cream".

Re:Hmmmm

[Andr T.]

Yeah, and my "Mice-cream-wagon" will play Vanilla Ice's version of "Mice-mice-baby".

Not that interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Drop some DNA or a mouse in liquid nitrogen or even a -80 freezer and it will last indefinitely. Cloning is interesting but length of storage isn't.

Re:Not that interesting

[mr_mischief]

The point is that they didn't do anything special to protect the cells against the damage of freezing. They took a mouse that was frozen just the way an animal would be frozen after death in the wild and worked around the damage freezing causes. The current cloning processes all use an intact healthy cell from an adult. This proves that's not necessary.

16 years is not

[BigGar']

16,000 or 160,000,000 years. While this may be "just engineering" to some, it's still a big just as there's still a lot of DNA degradation that happens over the course of millennia. There's a lot of reasons this might not work for a species we've never seen develop.

Of course it may work smackingly well and we'll all have miniature pet t-rex's in my lifetime. That would be sweet, the cat may not like it though.

Re:16 years is not

[jollyreaper]

16,000 or 160,000,000 years. While this may be "just engineering" to some, it's still a big just as there's still a lot of DNA degradation that happens over the course of millennia. There's a lot of reasons this might not work for a species we've never seen develop.

That's why you plug the gaps with frog DNA. Nothing could possibly go wrong!

Re:16 years is not

[TubeSteak]

Your words: That's why you plug the gaps with frog DNA. Nothing could possibly go wrong!

Your Sig:
Kwisatz Haderach sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne

Now imagine: The Great Frog Emperor of Dune!

Re:16 years is not

[RabidMoose]

Thing is, you should only need to find one perfect example of a species to be able to start cloning. Or, possibly put together a DNA puzzle from multiple specimen of the same species. Franken-t-rex FTW. (IANA Genetist. Feel free to lampoon my sci-fi views of genetic science now.)

Also, it'll be convienant to have a source of self-replicating hamburger to feed my new mini-dino guardpet.

Re:16 years is not

[Anonymous Coward]

The frog DNA turns out to be a third fail-safe that Crichton did not mention: If the lysine dependence and all-female population fail-safes did not stop the dinosaurs, the frog DNA should guarantee their extinction from fungus, habitat loss, and [possibly] man-made climate change.

Re:16 years is not

[Pigeon451]

How do you know that frozen DNA degrades over time? If a large enough sample is found (intact people/animals have been found frozen in glaciers) I'm sure they can find enough good DNA to make a proper clone.

Re:16 years is not

[John Hasler]

You need neither "one perfect sample" nor bits from different specimens. There are billions of copies of the DNA in one specimen. You match up overlapping segments until you have complete strands.

Re:16 years is not

[nodrogluap]

Cosmic radiation, hydrolysis, oxidation. These are always affecting DNA in living organisms (well, cosmic rays more on very long living stuff).

When living things freeze, the DNA repair mechanisms that are constantly keeping the genome in check stop.

Re:16 years is not

[sillybilly]

I miss mammoths. I would so love to see them again.

Re:16 years is not

[Jarik C-Bol]

sometimes, comments like these seem eerily sincere...

Re:16 years is not

[hoytak]

That would be sweet, the cat may not like it though.

No, but it would be inline with the confusing-the-heck-out-of-life-from-other-planets objective.

Oh, wait, that was regarding intelligent life. My bad.

Pinky and the Brain

[Andr T.]

Could we finally see Jurassic Park become a reality, or perhaps use this for colonizing other galaxies?

Pinky: "Gee Brain, what do you want to do tonight?"
The Brain: "The same thing we do every night, Pinky - we freeze, clone, and take over the universe."

Galaxies?

[1u3hr]

or perhaps use this for colonizing other galaxies

Getting ahead of ourselves, arent we?

Why don't we check out the 400 billion stars in our own galaxy first?

Or is it you don't know what a galaxy is?

(Sorry, is that too many rhetorical questions?)

Re:Galaxies?

[Anonymous Coward]

(Sorry, is that too many rhetorical questions?)

I don't know, was that a rhetorical question?

Re:Galaxies?

[wick3t]

Maybe they think they can clone a VMS Galaxy.

Re:Galaxies?

[jbeaupre]

More likely the Ford Galaxy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Galaxy
With car sales going south cloning may be the only way to get enough customers.

Re:Galaxies?

[Rorschach1]

You beat me to it. This is one of my pet peeves, and it shows up a lot in the crap that tries to pass itself off as science fiction on TV and in the movies. Does the general public really have no idea what a galaxy IS, or how far away other galaxies are, or how MANY stars there are in our own galaxy?

Same thing with time scales. Seems like no one cares too much to keep their millions, billions, and trillions straight. Come on, folks, it'll only take you 30 seconds of research to avoid making your ancient galactic empire a thousand times older than the universe itself.

Maybe writers think that because they don't understand it, no one else does and it doesn't really matter. Maybe I'll start writing sports stories, and attribute everything I don't understand to the infield fly rule, since I don't really understand it. No matter if the story is about football.

Re:Galaxies?

[lennier]

"Maybe I'll start writing sports stories, and attribute everything I don't understand to the infield fly rule, since I don't really understand it. No matter if the story is about football."

And it's fifteen-love-all, Godspeed You! Black Emperor coming up the inside straight, tacking to windward and about to haul the spinnaker, but oh no what's this, the referee's calling a line-out, leg before wicket, straight to the solar plexus and his king's in check. Respawn, quad damage, but can he get a triple-word score on the centre square. Yes he can, he's cleared the sand trap, an eagle under par at silly mid off and what a finish, what a finish. Straight to Alpha Centauri. Magnificent.

Re:Galaxies?

[m0rphin3]

s/galaxies/planets I made a typo while considering whether to write "the galaxy" or "other planets". Get over it.

Re:Galaxies?

[Chris Burke]

Same thing with time scales. Seems like no one cares too much to keep their millions, billions, and trillions straight. Come on, folks, it'll only take you 30 seconds of research to avoid making your ancient galactic empire a thousand times older than the universe itself.

Oh, ha ha. Don't think I can't tell what you're so subtly referring to. Look, if L.Ron said the universe is over four quadrillion years old, then that's how old it is! He doesn't need to do "research" of the findings of your pitiful thetan-festooned "scientists", he discovered the truth himself!

So they cloned the

[NotSoHeavyD3]

mousicle

Re:So they cloned the

[Ender_Stonebender]

I think the term that you are looking for is "corpsicle".

Why not, we've already got reports of organlegging...let's get a whole sci-fi vernacular introduced to the world at large!

Re:So they cloned the

[denzacar]

Mmmm... mousicle.

Not dinosaurs

[rrohbeck]

because there's hardly any DNA left in those fossils, let alone anything that's not damaged beyond recognition.
Mammoths, saber toothed cats or other species that have gone extinct more recently on the other hand...

Re:Not dinosaurs

[Thiez]

How about the dodo.

Admit it you want to know how it tastes!

Re:Not dinosaurs

[RabidMoose]

During the sentencing of John Doe for the killing and eating of albino baby seals, the judge calls John up to the stand, and quietly asks him: "Out of sheer curiosity, what did they taste like?"
To which John replies: "Sort of like a cross between bald eagle eggs and emperor penguin."

Re:Not dinosaurs

[adonoman]

Especially when they've been frozen instead of fossilized.

Re:Not dinosaurs

[sohp]

Tastes like chicken. Duh.

Re:Not dinosaurs

[quanminoan]

Or, better yet, the sea cow:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steller's_Sea_Cow

Re:Not dinosaurs

[Arancaytar]

Dodo LIVES!

Re:Not dinosaurs

[drfishy]

A funny post to be sure, but from accounts ~400 years ago we already know it tastes rather fowl.

Re:Not dinosaurs

[T Murphy]

I know you were just going for humor, but we know the dodo was "not tasty" (as noted by Bill Bryson in his book A Short History of Nearly Everything, page 470).

Ice Age Sequel

[dafz1]

Ice Age 3: Attack of the Clones

Re:Ice Age Sequel

[Thelasko]

Ice Age 3: Attack of the Clones

When I first read the summary, I thought they had cloned Scrat.

Alas, they didn't clone any extinct rodents, just some that had been frozen 16 years earlier.

Jurrasic Park

[clarkkent09]

Mammoths? Correct me if I'm wrong, but you still need a live animal in order to clone a dead one. I guess they can grow them in an elephant or another close cousin, is that the idea?

Re:Jurrasic Park

[kick6]

Mammoths? Correct me if I'm wrong, but you still need a live animal in order to clone a dead one. I guess they can grow them in an elephant or another close cousin, is that the idea?

Nah, we can just grow them in the matrix.

Re:Jurrasic Park

[craneG19]

No, just a giant test tube filled with a greenish liquid. Inject some stuff, it grows, attach some hoses, it grows some more. Rinse and repeat.

Re:Jurrasic Park

[nawcom]

Mammoths? Correct me if I'm wrong, but you still need a live animal in order to clone a dead one. I guess they can grow them in an elephant or another close cousin, is that the idea?

Yep, if the person who submitted the article actually read it, it says due to the fact that there are no known living cells from a woolly mammoth its not possible as of now, and a miniscule possibility in the future.

"However, it has been suggested that the 'resurrection' of frozen extinct species (such as the woolly mammoth) is impracticable, as no live cells are available, and the genomic material that remains is inevitably degraded," they said.

Re:Jurrasic Park

[yabos]

Nah, just throw it in the handy Borg Maturation Chamber. When we have that then this will probably be possible.

Re:Jurrasic Park

[DanOrc451]

TFA acknowledges this problem.

""Cloning animals by nuclear transfer provides an opportunity to preserve endangered mammalian species," they wrote.

"However, it has been suggested that the 'resurrection' of frozen extinct species (such as the woolly mammoth) is impracticable, as no live cells are available, and the genomic material that remains is inevitably degraded," they said."

But who would resort to such extreme measures as reading the article?

Re:ethics

[clarkkent09]

I mean, I'm all for freezing polar bears and other endangered species so that we can revive them when the weather is better (kind of like that grain vault) but shouldn't it be regulated so that it isn't creating awkward scenarios?

Like what, a long extinct animal suddenly appearing at a dinner party, causing everybody to spit out their drinks?

Alright, let's decide right now.

[Yvan256]

We know someone is going to make a real-life Jurassic Park someday, let's decide right now where it should be.

We need a really isolated island, let the voting begin!

Reply with your choice and for which reasons.

Re:Alright, let's decide right now.

[genner]

L.A.

If something goes horribley wrong you have a hit reality show.

Re:Alright, let's decide right now.

[mr_mischief]

I'd rather have Paleolithic Park, and Greenland works for me.

Re:Alright, let's decide right now.

[RabidMoose]

Terra-formed moon!
Nothing scarier than velociraptors that can jump 6x further.

Re:Alright, let's decide right now.

[Tony Hoyle]

I vote Australia.

Re:Alright, let's decide right now.

[ColdWetDog]

If something goes horribley wrong you have a hit reality show.

I was in LA last month. I don't understand how you could possibly tell the difference between a normal rush hour and "something gone horribly wrong".

A couple of T-rex's on the freeway would be a decided improvement.

Re:Alright, let's decide right now.

[Fumus]

British Isles? :P

Re:Alright, let's decide right now.

[jelizondo]

Manhattan

I hear real estate is really cheap there nowadays

Plus we would get rid of bear or bull markets, it would Mammoth or Sabertooth Tiger markets:-)

Re:Alright, let's decide right now.

[BotnetZombie]

Iceland. We are broke and we want the money now.

Re:Alright, let's decide right now.

[Thelasko]

L.A.

It's not remote enough. If a Snake can escape from L.A. surely a T-Rex can.

Also, Michael Crichton died yesterday.

Re:Alright, let's decide right now.

[rrohbeck]

Japan.
They have lots of experience with Godzilla already.

Re:Alright, let's decide right now.

[Ironsides]

I vote any herbivors go to North/South America and all Carnivores and Omnivores go to Europe. Now if you will excuse me, I need to find a taxidermist willing to stuff a Brachiasaurus.

Re:Alright, let's decide right now.

[Yvan256]

Funniest reply so far, please mod up.

Re:Alright, let's decide right now.

[eleuthero]

Orbital?

Re:Alright, let's decide right now.

[Yvan256]

Dude, you can't say that on the intarwebs!

Re:Alright, let's decide right now.

[BarefootClown]

Manhattan. Completely uncolonized by humans.

Bring back Mark Twain

[moteyalpha]

I think we should clone Mark Twain and ask him what he thinks about all this stuff as he might get a +5 funny all the time on /.

Re:Bring back Mark Twain

[junglee_iitk]

I haven't read much of Mark Twain. Could you please elaborate?

Re:Bring back Mark Twain

[The Fun Guy]

Sounds good to me.

Re:Bring back Mark Twain

[Ironsides]

Here's his quotes
http://www.twainquotes.com/quotesatoz.html
OCTOBER: This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The other are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February.

The government of my country snubs honest simplicity, but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or two.

After that, you might try reading Huckfin, Tom Sawyer and a whole host of others. You might try checking your local library.

Re:Bring back Mark Twain

[junglee_iitk]

I have read Huckberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, and also some of his essays, but this quote is new, and something quite apt for this atmosphere :)

Re:Bring back Mark Twain

[Ironsides]

Hence why I decided to see what he said on those subjects. I found that site through a quick google, and seeing as I like to collect quotes, found it wonderful. You might also get a kick out of his comment on Dachshunds (it might be under dogs).

Brilliant!

[ChinggisK]

Could we finally see Jurassic Park become a reality

Yea we should totally do that, because it worked out so well in the movie.

Re:Brilliant!

[ed.mps]

ohh, what could possibly go wrong? ;)

Re:Brilliant!

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Breaking news! Michael Crichton, the author of the blockbuster science-fiction novel "Jurassic Park," and winner of an Academy Technical Achievement Award has died. He was 66. Truly an American icon.

Re:Brilliant!

[AttillaTheNun]

Quick, while his DNA is still warm!

Re:Brilliant!

[mqduck]

Your point you (made ironically) is completely right. We absolutely should never do this because it was a disaster in a movie.

One in a million chance

[tsa]

They should calculate which extinct animal has a one in a million chance of resurrection by cloning its DNA. After all, one in a million chances pop up one time out of ten.

Any bets

[rehtonAesoohC]

on how long it will take PETA to get involved and start making features like The Meatrix?

misread the tags as "science bitch"

[h4x354x0r]

or biatch or something like that.

Colonization

[nani popoki]

Yes. Pretty soon the galaxy will be full of spaceships carrying frozen telephone sanitizors.

Re:Colonization

[moose_hp]

You forgot the hairdressers and the lawyers.

Galactic colonization?

[overshoot]

Well, there's a bit of a gap between 16 years and the tens of thousands needed to reach even near stars.

Seems to me we'd be better off recording the genome in something with serious ECC and system redundancy so there's some reasonable chance that when it arrives it might actually be possible to produce something viable.

Re:Galactic colonization?

[John Hasler]

> Seems to me we'd be better off recording the genome in something with serious ECC and
> system redundancy...

It already has both.

Re:Galactic colonization?

[overshoot]

> Seems to me we'd be better off recording the genome in something with serious ECC and
> system redundancy...

It already has both.

Not nearly enough to maintain data integrity over the course of millennia in a high-radiation environment without scrub cycles.

Great News for the morbidly weird

[Theoboley]

Ted Williams Jr. now has hope to bring his father back to life.

michael crichton just died

[Digitus1337]

It's interesting that you mention this; http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/05/print/main4575403.shtml .

Re:michael crichton just died

[Phat_Tony]

That's sad news, and odd timing for me, because I just found his website with his speeches a few days ago, and then got State Of Fear out of the library yesterday.

His speeches are not too long and are really great reads. There are some mistakes and things I disagree with, but they provide a lot of interesting information and a lot to think about. I particularly like Aliens Cause Global Warming.

Ahh, breaking news. When I started writing this post, his website was working fine... now it's already timing out. News travels fast these days.

Re:michael crichton just died

[idontgno]

That's frakin' weird; I was just gonna write you off as YA "Steven King" troll, but it's legit.

Truly a great American.

Michael Crichton died today

[kentrel]

RIP http://news.google.co.uk/news/url?sa=t&ct=uk/0-0&fp=491182f120c62f7f&ei=XuERScjTB4LAwgGmqZTzBA&url=http%3A//www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/05/print/main4575403.shtml&cid=0&usg=AFQjCNHcr8G0ar1Zy3zr0YIYCdj0c4I2iw

Re:Michael Crichton died today

[mr_stinky_britches]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/05/print/main4575403.shtml

How sad-- RIP M.C.

Probably wouldn't work

[yabos]

Muscles have to go under tension to become denser. I don't think just growing a bunch of muscle cells in a giant tub would really work out to produce the same thing as real animal flesh from a walking crapping cow.

Re:Probably wouldn't work

[tom17]

Well surely the special meat vats would be designed with this in mind and have built in electrical stimulus to exercise the meat.

Maybe it can come pre-peppered.

Mmmmmmm

Tom...

Re:Probably wouldn't work

[Alexandra Erenhart]

That's true, but I don't know how much tension cow muscles go through when they're locked up being fed.

Re:Probably wouldn't work

[yabos]

Quite a bit. The cow weighs over a thousand pounds and it's standing most of the time.

Re:Probably wouldn't work

[Golddess]

If nothing else, I'm sure it'd pass as veal.

Re:Probably wouldn't work

[idontgno]

Muscles have to go under tension to become denser.

Tension is overrated. The best beef I've ever had was pretty relaxed. Fed beer, sake, and high-quality grain; massaged regularly... Dang, I might sign up for such treatment even if I knew I'd be slaughtered and butchered after a few years.

Boys from Brazil

[cootuk]

Now Josef Mengele can finally get Hitler out of the deep freeze...

Bring back Walt Disney!

[nysus]

He had his body iced so he could be resurrected. He wasn't a crazy kook after all!

Crichton died today, pre-Jurassic Park technology

[The Fun Guy]

If only Michael Crichton could have lived to see it all come true.

Bring on the velociraptors!

What are we going to do....

[nadamucho]

....with TWO frozen mice?

Frozen Heads Conquer The Galaxy!

[itsybitsy]

Awesome! Now we can have our frozen heads conquering the galaxy...

Just when you thought you were dead they bring you back to life!

So now not only do you have to arrange your life so that you live the longest you possibly can so that you don't miss that latest star trek or star wars or battlestar galactica or the hulk or the spiderman or ultraviolet or ... (fill in the blank) ... but you've got to make sure that when you're die you (1) either get frozen so you can live again as a clone or (2) have your body and all dna destroyed so that you can't enjoy the eternity of nothingness without being disturbed by being brought back to life on some hell planet that some mad scientist or mad bureaucrat's idea of who should be awoken on the newest hellish exo-planet with exotic aliens that love human flesh...

This of course assumes that clones will have some memory of their prior owners past life. Well ok it assumes a lot more...

So who wants to sign up to have their frozen corpse's travel to and populate exo-planets with clones just to have them eaten by hellish exotic aliens?

I'm in. Any REAL NON belief-stricken-faith-based-delusional chance for life beyond the great nothing with awaits us all. Oh, a clone wouldn't be me so it's not a way out of death after all... sigh...

Oh wait, it's likely that the stuff of life came to Earth from space thus are we are alien life living on an exo-planet with hellish conditions ... ?

What about...

[GameboyRMH]

harder?

Re:From the Standpoint of a Carnivore ...

[Ironsides]

I'd prefer Dodo wings myself.

Not quite.

[Brain-Fu]

We need plants for minerals and meats for amino acids.

We get all the amino acids we need from plants. We don't actually 'need' meat at all. This belief is largely the product of successful marketing on the part of the meat and dairy industry.

That doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't eat meat though. We do plenty of things we don't need to do, and it is ok.

Re:Not quite.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it would be more accurate to say we don't need to eat meat anymore. Fact of the matter is, meat is a much more energy dense than plant matter. That's why herbivores seem to be eating all the time and carnivores are always laying around.

Re:Not quite.

[hey!]

Well, you have to make a distinction between what an individual "needs" to survive and what a species "needs" to support certain evolutionary trends.

There is seems to be considerable scientific opinion to the effect that meat eating played an important role in making the large brained, linguistically gifted and tool making species H. sapiens possible. However, this doesn't mean that individual humans or pre-humans have ever "needed" meat to survive, or that eating meat to any degree was more "healthy" as we'd define it.

Humans in primitive conditions no doubt ate opportunistically. If you're a primitive person out hunting, you aren't going to ignore a bush full of berries because today's hunting day. Edible herbs probably went straight into the mouth without a second thought. So I expect people were constantly grazing on plants. On the other hand, they'd also gorge themselves on meat when given a chance -- check out the huge prehistoric shell middens they left behind. And of course, when you kill a mammoth, you'd better have a refrigerator for all that meat.

And, of course, humans didn't have refrigerators; they just became extremely adept at turning those meat calories into fat. They had to store calories, to support their very thermally expensive brains.

A modern person, of course, can graze on herbs and roots all the time. It's probably healthier for him too, although regular, small inclusions of meat in his diet do no harm and simplify getting the amino acids he needs.

Re:Not quite.

[DarrylKegger]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level

I told the waiter

[Dareth]

... that steak was so good I wouldn't mind meeting the cow, um er well too late I guess.

About 5-10 years from now
Me: Give me a '08 Fb795 ribeye please medium rare...
Waiter: An excellent choice, good vintage there.

Just in time for Michael Crichton?

[punterjoe]

...just askin'

Better rethink that plan

[monkeySauce]

I don't think colonizing other galaxies with frozen mice is such a great idea. Live mice aren't too bright, let alone frozen ones.

Probably just an oversight, but...

[RexDevious]

I wouldn't recommend that the same company that is cloning mice subsequently clone very large elephants.

Adam Savage

[antdude]

Adam Savage would be happy for that, but not the tasting part.

If we had it....

[DrYak]

When you farm an animal, you benefit from millions of years of evolution designing the perfect environment to grow muscle mass. It's not going to be easy to replicate that in the lab.

If we actually had that technology currently available, I think growing replacement organs would be a very nice application of it {/dreaming}

Well at least there's some research in that direction (growing some simpler organs out of stem cells) getting reported about on Slashdot from time to time.

Tofurkey?!?

[AttillaTheNun]

Someone please explain to me the merits of Tofurkey.

Why would a vegan/vegetarian give a rats ass if a hunk of tofu tastes like turkey (or a hotdog, hamburger, etc) unless they THIRST FOR THE TASTE OF ANIMAL FLESH!!!

Ice Age : Attack of the Clones

[DrYak]

"However, it has been suggested that the 'resurrection' of frozen extinct species (such as the woolly mammoth) is impracticable, as no live cells are available, and the genomic material that remains is inevitably degraded," they said.

On the other hand, DNA can withstand quite some abuse (that's why evolution came up with it - it's much more durable than RNA), and the low temperatures can further help preserve it from chemical degradation.

Who knows, maybe with some luck, maybe we'll happen to stumble upon enough material to clone a specie that old.

Insightful?

[Anonymous Coward]

He talks about killing all hippies and gets modded insightful? I know that some people on slashdot have trouble recognizing a joke when they see one...but seriously...insightful???

What little trace of faith I once had in the slashdot moderation system is now completely gone.

And yes I am kinda new here.

You can cross anything with a poodle

[nickruiz]

Hear hear. I own a pet Cockapoo. I've seen everything from a Yorkipoo, a Golden Doodle, and a Jackipoo. Why not a t-rexipoo.

Better yet, we could create a jackalope.

Let's apply it to the Tasmanian Tiger!

[SethJohnson]

There's a lot of reasons this might not work for a species we've never seen develop.

While I share people's enthusiasm for bringing back the Mammoths, I agree that there are some significant hurdles for applying this technique to that species. Perhaps it would be a good fit for bringing back the Tasmanian Tiger?

Seth

Re:Let's apply it to the Tasmanian Tiger!

[Nazlfrag]

They tried once, I'm sure they can try again.

On Monday

[Kaptain Kruton]

...on Monday it may be possible to use the technique to resurrect mammoths and other extinct species.

Why Monday? Does he have something against doing it on Tuesday or Wednesday?

Other GALAXIES?

[SmallFurryCreature]

Geez, colonize other GALAXIES? Talk about ambitious. How about we first go about colonizing other star systems Einstein.

You see, our solar system is part of a galaxy which is that big swirly thing you select your destination thing on in every space game. A galaxy is a HUGE thing, so huge that even in Star Trek they only explored a part of it and only in a handful of stories make it out. Star Wars similar is restricted to a single galaxy.

Even in less the scientific sci-fi, other galaxies are out of bounds and we are supposed to colonize them?

Geez, you would expect this idiotic mistake in the popular press, but not on slashdot.

As for using the method of using this to colonize other planets. Mmm, you would need to create a system that can not only carry frozen embryoos (no need for cloning, we know how to make babies), carry them to term, then raise them, educate them and... well let them get on with it I suppose.

All this in a place you know nothing about without any communication with earth.

It MIGHT be something to attempt if earth was under direct threath, to preserve the species, but it has no other purpose even if it could be done.

A completely automated nursery/school? Hell of a pipedream.

Re:Crichton died today, pre-Jurassic Park technolo

[cffrost]

Bring on the velociraptors!

Per your request.

Dangerous cloning

[brownean]

I must admit while cloning mice may be fun and have slight benefits, cloning dinosaur fossils or anything that would prove hard to contain is not the safest idea. This is because so many mistakes can be made. How many people has seen Jurassic Park?

Dangerous cloning

[brownean]

While cloning mice can be fun and have some benefits, cloning dinosaur fossils and anything too large to contain is not the safest idea. There are so many things that could go wrong. How many people have seen Jurassic Park?

Imagine..

[bronney]

somehow we get our hands on the corpse of Jesus. And cloned him.

Wow my brain's hurting.

Popsicle Clones

[fartrader]

Japanese scientists have cloned mice whose bodies were frozen for as long as 16 years

Great, now I have two frozen mice, whats the point of that?

cloning of mice

[elephant72]

That is cruel, how would you like to be frozen for years then cloned? It would be kind of like that movie The Island with all those cloned people. A mammoth is extinct, why not just leave it to rest in peace?