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Scientists To Breed the Auroch From Extinction
ImNotARealPerson writes "Scientists in Italy are hoping to breed back from extinction the mighty auroch, a bovine species which has been extinct since 1627. The auroch weighed 2,200 pounds (1000kg) and its shoulders stood at 6'6". The beasts once roamed most of Asia and northern Africa. The animal was depicted in cave paintings and Julius Caesar described it as being a little less in size than an elephant. A member of the Consortium for Experimental Biotechnology suggests that 99% of the auroch's DNA can be recreated from genetic material found in surviving bone material. Wikipedia mentions that researchers in Poland are working on the same problem."
It sounds delicious.
I know it's no longer accurate, but for the longest geneticists thought humans and chimps were 99% similar genetically.... but there does seem to be a gulf...
OTOH, in unrelated cow developments, (not new) is the Super Cow
See, given that our genetic similarity so many known animals is at least 95%, would 99% of the dna really be enough to recreate the animal? It appears as though small differences (1% of a very large number of genes is a large number of genes) are sufficient to make a new species, or, most likely, a non-functioning animal.
Would love to be proved wrong.
Why is it that every time something neat in biology comes up, the first thing everyone says is 'What could possibly go wrong' implying, of course, that something exceptionally negative will come about as a result of it? Jeepers, this thing only died out four centuries ago. They're not going to hunt you down in trained squads.
Aurochs, the "ochs"-part meaning "ox" and the "aur" being a nomer for something like "original" or "ancestral"...
"The number you have dialed is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again."
Their small, portable, cute, and probably taste like chicken!
Doesn't some fat Roman governor serve aurochs at an orgy in Asterix in Helvetia?
A bit offtopic, I know, but can we please stop referring to everyone and everything as scientists? If you need better terms, try "Geneticists" or "Breeders" or "Italians." Saying that Scientists are going to do it is an overused catch-all phrase that doesn't actually add any information. What, could it have been that Creationists were going to breed the auroch from extinction? Linguists? Liberal arts majors?
The ______ Agenda
The force is weak in this one. Snigger.
A 30min radio offering via bbc iplayer http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00hc946/b00hc6xc/Jon_Ronson_and_the_Quest_for_the_Aryan_Cow/ (runs until 9:32pm Thursday 21st January 2010 ) covers the trip to Munich Zoo by John Ronson. "Jon Ronson investigates the controversial story of the work of Lutz Heck, the director of Berlin Zoo who attempted to resurrect several pure-blooded, extinct animal species as part of the Nazi programme to control the genetic destiny of all creation. He visits Munich Zoo, which proudly advertises its 'formerly extinct aurochs' - a type of large and powerful cow - but does not refer to the fact that behind this apparent triumph lies the story of Heck's collusion with Goering's aspiration to replace Europe's 'racially degenerate' wildlife and plant life with pure, 'noble' and extinct species."
the damn thing doesn't start talking to me, I hate that shit.
It's the reason I'll never go back to Milliways.
Chances of that are slim considering that the creature in question will be held domestically, and has died out only 383 years ago.
-- Cheers!
This is great and all, but it's also something that the Nazis were doing before WWII - there are quite a lot of these Heck cattle still around. There was even a radio programme on the BBC about it a week or so ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heck_cattle
Maybe the Italians and the Poles are using a technique closer to cloning, but why then talk about breeding back - the same methodology that the Hecks used?
Dunx
Converting caffeine into code since 1982
Clever girl, Bessie...
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
... does not mean you should.
Have these scientists contemplated what could happen if these created creatures escape into the wild breeding amongst themselves and/or other similar species.
Whole ecosystems can be destroyed by introducing one creature into them.
You know, this argument is getting old for me. Anything that could progress human knowledge is looked down on anymore with an excuse like this one. I for one want to see real scientific advancement. I want genetic research on ALL levels. Lets bring back species that was destroyed by man, lets cure cancer, lets do SOMETHING.
A day will come when advancements in medicine/science will be had and everyone will then wonder why we waited so long.
Actions have consequences, be the actions scientifically based or anything else.
Only a child thinks he/she should do anything he wants and nothing bad can happen.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
The Italians are creating weapons of mass destruction. Send in the troops.
They have sequence much of the animal's DNA. Maybe by the time they breeders are getting close the DNA technology will be able to better analyze the old samples.
Jurassic Park needn't be taken literally for it to be a good parable about why we should be concerned that toying with life and death can have unforeseen consequences.
I for one welcome our new bio-engineered bovine overlords.
Toying with life? Do you mean like what we do with vaccines that stop disease, medicines that cure, or plant breeding that feeds the world? Even brewing beer and baking bread could be considered 'toying with life.' No one's saying to be reckless, but you've got to admit toying with life has brought a hell of a lot more benefit than harm.
Jurassic Park was a good movie, but a parable? My arse! Why is it that so many movies have some mad scientists killing people with their crazed experiments, but you never see the movie about people starving to death or succumbing to preventable/curable diseases because the scientists didn't do the research?
What if people like Norman Borlaug or Edward Jenner didn't 'toy with nature?' It wouldn't be a very pretty sight, would it? I for one like it when we toy with life.
Like the Passenger Pigeon, maybe?
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Would you believe me if I said that's the last time I post a Slashdot comment without doing proper research?
Personally, as a jew, I would relish the opportunity to see the Nazi cow finally bred into a full and fertile existence... and promptly labelled Kosher.
Schadenfreude is a wonderful seasoning for an Auroch burger.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
It's called an aurochs. Research fail.
Turning that around, only a neurotic under-achiever thinks that everything is dangerous and the remotest possibility for disaster is an excuse not to do something. I agree with you that one extreme is no good, but the other is just as dangerous. GP had a good point - hypothesising about the dangers without having an idea about the specifics of the implementation (specifically the proposed safety measures) is as useless and frustrating for the people trying to get things done as the oft-confronted "MSCE Certified Luser Who Is An 'Expert' (But Doesn't Know What Right Click Is)". Why not let the experts explain how they're going to contain or negate the danger, before jumping up and down about how they're going to kill us all?
TFS says "The auroch weighed 2,200 pounds (1000kg) and its shoulders stood at 6'6". The beasts once roamed most of Asia and northern Africa. The animal was depicted in cave paintings and Julius Caesar described it as being a little less in size than an elephant."
Some modern horses weigh over a ton (shire horse is up to 1½ ton, brabant horse average over 1 ton, clydesdale horses typically about 1 ton), bulls in some breeds of cattle can be up to 1½ tons, and the American Bison occasionally exceeds a ton also. These animals would hardly be described as just a little less than an elephant in size, so we're looking at a certain amount of exaggeration or hoopla in TFS and TFA.
BTW, the record weight for a bull is 1740 kg, so the Auroch hardly merits being referred to as a "giant"
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
A pig would better - they could market it as jew-rassic pork.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
I knew it a long time ago that i would live long enough to see Jurassic Park happen.
I'm here for the experience, not the Hyperbole.
Yeah,
don't we often hear how humans and chimpanzees share something like >95% of their DNA?
And where is the jurassicpark tag?
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Honestly I blame Jurassic Park and Michael Chrichton for spreading false and completely useless tales about science gone wrong. He's the reason its hard to work on cloning things and any number of other supposedly taboo subjects of which the general populace's only knowledge comes from patently false pulp mulched out by him and others like him.
"We do what we must, because we can."
That depends on in which animal they find the missing 1% DNA
This is blinging
Where would it live? Between a highway and a power line maybe? There is no living space in modern Europe for wild animals. I doubt it can live in a stall either.
It is called aurochs, not "auroch", as one would realize by clicking the Wikipedia link provided. It is a German word and means "Ancient Ox".
There's more than one kind of elephant.
In fact in Caesar's time there was a third kind - the North African elephant. These were used in war, most famously by Hannibal and so that's probably the sort he was familiar with. They were pretty small, as elephants go.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'm amazed that nobody has commented that one of the beasties is (or was) an AUROCHS, not an "auroch". Two of 'em would be auroches or aurochsen. Talking about an "auroch" is like talking about a Chinee or Portugee. More to the point, it would be like talking about "ock" as the singular of oxen, since "ox" is the second syllable of aurochs.
-- John Dierdorf, Austin TX
As it turns out if you recall the very popular series "Sliders", that explores scenarios where the scientists didn't do that sort of research in alternate earths. Very interesting stuff, we need more of that sort of entertainment, espscially with its emphasis on non violence.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
anyone else read this as "Auror" at the first glance? ;-)
Ever wondered whats wrong with the world? http://www.ishmael.org/
..is a load of bull!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
What could possibly go wrong' implying, of course, that something exceptionally negative will come about as a result of it?
How about Aurochs with lasers on their heads?
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Actually in this case it was the second thing everyone said. The first (usually taking second place) was, "I wonder what they taste like."
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
Trademark the name McAuroch - you'll make a fortune.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
... but you never see the movie about people starving to death or succumbing to preventable/curable diseases because the scientists didn't do the research? ...
There are.
But usually, people who die to preventable diseases are displayed as heroes for sticking with their belief system. Martyrdom meme is strong.
-- Technology for the sake of technology is as pathetic as eschewing technology because it's technology.
I'm guessing their farts contain a surprising amount of methane and they singlehandedly double the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, bringing forth the apocalypse while unassumingly chewing grass in the fields.
As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability of an analogy involving cars approaches one.
'Toying with life' is one valuable definition of 'life'.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I'm more concerned that these biologists will implement a Tron-inspired 3D file browser that pre-teen female Unix haxors will know how to use. Other than that, I'm ready to buy my tickets to Medieval Park.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Yeah, Llew Silverhand is what I thought of while reading this as well.
It's ironic that some of the people who rant the loudest against humans "playing God" by choosing to discontinue life-support or terminating a pregnancy have no problems with putting someone on life-support to begin with (defying what would seem a rather obvious decision by "God" that the person is ready to die) or engaging in the most "God-like" act of all: willfully creating a new life. It's not so much that they object to people playing God, rather they object to people making God-like decisions that disagree with their own.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Details matter.
You actually *can* learn something useful in a way from considering the Jurassic Park story. Consider this: the T. rex was awesome, *cool* even. The raptors were terrifying. The little venom spitting dinosaur was the worst.
If you think about it, that's actually a fairly reasonable reaction. Which of the animals would be a potential problem for people if they were reconstructed? The T. rex is huge, easy to spot, and probably needs an enormous geographic range to itself to survive. If a breeding pair escaped, they'd have almost no chance of establishing a stable population, even if people left them alone.
The raptors on the other hand might have a chance. The range for a single T. rex probably would support a good sized band of them. But they probably wouldn't be hard to hunt down. They're still pretty big and would be easy to track down. As formidable as they are, they wouldn't be a match for a squad of human commandos.
It's that little spitting dinosaur that you'd have to look out for. If a breeding pair escaped, they'd be all over the place and you'd never be able to eradicate them.
The smaller an individual organism is and the less resources it requires to maintain itself in breeding condition, the harder it is to eradicate. Insects the the fire ant, the japanese beetle, or the asian tiger mosquito pretty much can't be stopped once they start breeding in a hospitable environment. Microorganisms are the very hardest. Unless they have a very narrow habitat (e.g. pathogens that infect humans only), you can't even begin to contain their geographic spread; even then it's hard.
In any case, if you read the book, the real screwups werent't he scientists. They were the systems engineers who relied too much on the resumptions in the requirements spec.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Jurassic Park is just one example of many. People have countless idiotic notions about "cloning" that have nothing to do with Chrichton's fiction (e.g. it'll lead to overpopulation, a clone will know everything the original does). There's a whole lot of Hollywood (and just plain ignorance about biology) to blame.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
In fact in Caesar's time there was a third kind - the North African elephant.
now they'll have to bring back the North African elephant to validate this claim. Then there's the whole "mice scare elephants" wisdom, which some researchers say was only true with North African elephants and Eastern Egyptian mice.
At which point, to get rid of the extinct Eastern Egyptian mice, they'll have to bring back the extinct European Lion, and slightly older Smilodon (saber-toothed cat).
And to get rid of them, they'll have to save from extinction the nearly-extinct Gorillas.
And to get rid of these, the scientist will have to bring back the Ice-Age winters, so the Gorilla freezes to death.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
"researchers in Poland are working on the same problem."
Problem?
At the risk of being serious, to get a pig labeled "kosher", you'd have to breed/DNA-splice out the characteristics that put it on the "traif" list to begin with, to the point it's really no longer a pig. Specifically you'd need a pig with multiple stomachs so it can chew cud, or a pig with different feet.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Only disaster could possibly occur when we do such thing.
Haven't any of you learned anything from the movie, "Jurassic Pauroch?"
Who's going to be the first to ride one of these in a rodeo? I'm surprised no one even mentioned this.
I seem to recall reading an article a few years back about a pig that scientists believed was in the middle of evolving just those traits. As someone who keeps kosher, I'm looking forward to eating my kosher bacon.... in a few million years.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Except of course when they are allowing their children to die. Then they're generally seen as negligent.
And later, there's the running... and the screaming...
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
With human DNA of that quality, you could as well get any other type of ape out.
Sorry, 99% is not even close to enough. Try more like 99.99999%
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Seriously, I couldn't read the article... every time they wrote 'auroch' instead of 'aurochs', I cringed a little.
I remember back when speed limit signs in the US used to have mph and kph on them. I thought we'd be switched in the next few years. But then they all went away and people were again satisfied with using what they already knew.
What'll be fun is when they try building a space elevator to "reach the heavens" and it fails because the units don't match up. Didn't I hear this story before? From way back when Aurochs were still around?
So when these Auroch things are alive again, are the spellchecker overlords going to add them to the list? I see they get a red line for me today. Those guys read this site, right?
You neglect to consider all the kids inspired into biology and genetics, archaeology & palentology, and chaos and fractals (ok that guy sucked) and 'It's a Unix system' and off I fly into the filesystem! (ok you might have a point...)
Do you know who else tried to bring back aurochs?
That's right, Hitler!
Domestication of animals, selective breeding, these are ancient practices that go back further than agriculture, which is the breeding of plants. Considering that humans have been successfully "toying" with life for some 10 millenia and more, I'd say there's probably nothing disastrous with it. Heck, many modern day cow species were selectively bred from aurochsen.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Not in the sense meant. It was meant as a secular version of the phrase "playing god", which still carries its meaning in its secular form. That is, in no sense, a definition of "life".
TFA states that they're using back-breeding techniques to breed something that resembles an Aurochs, NOT doing nuclear transfer of existing Aurochs DNA.
Call me when you have the 'real thing', not a cheap Bavarian knockoff.
[John Cleese Schweppes commercial reference; no offense to Bavarians, living or dead.]
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
"Toying with life? Do you mean like what we do with vaccines that stop disease, medicines that cure, or plant breeding that feeds the world? "
To a certain extent (and lesser or greater depending on which item I'm addressing), yes. But if I'm supposed to play along and blindly accept that those you listed are universally "good" (rather than themselves having unforeseen consequences), I'd argue that there is a big difference between the aurochs story and all of those items (with the exception that in recent times we've begun creating new species of plants).
"Jurassic Park was a good movie, but a parable? My arse!"
Well if you shout it, it must be true!
"Why is it that so many movies have some mad scientists killing people with their crazed experiments"
They needn't be "mad".
"but you never see the movie about people starving to death or succumbing to preventable/curable diseases because the scientists didn't do the research?"
Because artists tend to make metaphors that are simpler than the subjects of their metaphors? I don't know. I'm not a filmmaker, not my problem. If you want to see that film, make it happen. But that doesn't change the fact that Jurassic Park—as a metaphor for extreme intervention into the life and death of species, in any way—does provide some insight into the dangers of that practice.
"Norman Borlaug"
Perhaps without his work the Mexican economy wouldn't have been so vulnerable to "free trade", disrupting fewer small-scale farmers and relegating less of the Mexican economy to export for increasingly concentrated profits? We'd perhaps see fewer Mexicans displaced as a consequence of this, and maybe even a less potent anti-immigrant sentiment in the US as a consequence of that. But it's hard to know, no one can predict alternate realities too accurately.
"Edward Jenner"
Hard to say. But you'll note that I set vaccinations aside in my earlier response, pointing out that this is a wholly different class of "toying with life" than I meant when discussing the invention and introduction of whole new species.
Don't feel too bad, even the guy who did his research didn't really... According to the above referenced Wikipedia article:
In 1897, a bill was introduced in the Michigan legislature asking for a ten-year closed season on passenger pigeons. This was a futile gesture. This was a highly gregarious species—the flock could initiate courtship and reproduction only when they were gathered in large numbers; it was realized only too late that smaller groups of passenger pigeons could not breed successfully, and the surviving numbers proved too few to re-establish the species.[3] Attempts at breeding among the captive population also failed for the same reasons.
So, unless they can make a very large quantity of them, it will be difficult to restart the passenger pigeon.
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
Who was the brave, yet utterly retarded soul who would dare to catalogue the taste sensations?
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Ugh, playing God, that has got to be one of the most annoying overused phrases out there. I'm about as Christian as they come, and once I get out of college I want to go into genetic engineering, so that phrase pisses me off twice over. From a theological point of view, it's presumptive, arrogant, and illogical. From a scientific point of view, obviously it holds no weight, but usually it makes even less sense when evidence is considered. I was talking to someone about the Rainbow papaya (the genetically engineered strain that saved the Hawaiian papaya industry by having papaya ringspot virus genes inserted into it), and the reaction I was getting was, 'Oh, that's dangerous, it has virus DNA in it.' My response was most things do have foreign viral DNA in them, including heirloom seeds and humans (after a few million years of evolution, that stuff starts to accumulate). The response to that fact? Goddidit, so that's totally different. Facepalm.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heck_cattle
I wouldn't claim that they have been completely successful, however this is a fairly interesting historical note.
usually, people who die to preventable diseases are displayed as heroes for sticking with their belief system.
Like in Steel Magnolias. Saying that Julia Roberts' character deserved to die tends not to win points with the ladies.
The real question is -- what will they do to the existing ecosystem? they're not the only animal that's either gone extinct or changed its range. What about the predators and plant life and other organisms, not to mention the watershed, that reintroducing such an animal will impact?
This was not well-examined prior to reintroducing wolves in the Yellowstone area, and now they're a problem, not only to domestic livestock but also to other wild species (there is some thought that the new wolf population could exterminate the elk within a couple generations, at their present rate of unchecked population growth).
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
"The smaller an individual organism is and the less resources it requires to maintain itself in breeding condition, the harder it is to eradicate."
Excellent point.
A possible corollary worth considering: the more macro the impact, the more micro changes it will engender as other organisms adapt and fill the new niches, and therefore the more insidious the unintended effects.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Have these scientists contemplated what could happen if these created creatures escape into the wild breeding amongst themselves and/or other similar species.
Yah, because a herd of slow-moving herbivores which we've ALREADY hunted to extinction is somehow going to be impossible to exterminate. Those 2,000lb bovines are sneaky fuckers. I think there's a colony hiding under my fridge. I keep putting out traps but, no matter how many I kill, there always seem to be more!
Hopefully they could use the technology to bring back some other extinct species, such as the passenger pigeon.
It depends on your point of view. In science, many things are "problems", but can be quite different in scope. Everything is broken down into a series of "problems" to be solved by science. Whether you work on large-scale or very specific problems depends on your field and your specific research, but it all feeds into the overall system and advances scientific knowledge.
For example: something like climate change is a "problem" in that it affects the whole planet in a somewhat unpredictable and possibly disastrous way (for humans anyway).
To get at a solution to that huge problem, you can't really attack it head-on. You have to narrow it down to smaller problems. So for example, we need to ease off on fossil fuels. Great - for that, we need better batteries. Battery tech is a more well-defined problem, and much easier to work on than attacking climate change as a whole.
I'm not a geneticist, biologist, or anything like that (I am a geologist) so I can't say too much about TFS, but I do see it as a "problem" that's worthy of study, for a few reasons. First, for the reason I explained above - if it's valid science, it contributes to the whole no matter what the result. For example, cutting-edge gene sequencing and other techniques are being refined with this type of research, and that has applications across the whole field. Second, it's cool and interesting. As a scientist in a field that's often hard to explain the utility of myself, that's good enough for me... anything that brings us closer to Jurassic Park is awesome. Even if we just have a "Stuff Extinct Because of Humans Park", that would be amazing and extremely valuable.
I'm not accusing you specifically of anything, this is a generality - people do not understand science and how it's useful unless it directly affects their life. The thing is, even the craziest science contributes in some way to "useful" science. Cloning extinct animals isn't curing cancer, which would be a directly useful application of similar science (biology, genetics, etc.) that most will see the utility in. However, besides the improved techniques as I mentioned, we *don't know* what will come of this kind of experimentation. Scientific breakthroughs are often serendipitous - for all we know, this research *will* directly lead to curing cancer.
A final point - science requires a different mindset than engineering. In engineering, there is a distinct problem (say, crossing the river), and (usually) one best solution (a certain type of bridge). In science, it's not the outcome (the bridge) that matters, it's the process. The problem is ill-defined (there's no specific river to cross). The hard part is coming up with the questions that need to be answered (we're looking for rivers to cross, and not necessarily just because we need to get to the other side). What we find along the way slowly but surely adds to our understanding of the world.
http://wearscience.com/design/jurassic/
Proud owner of one. :)
With the first link, the chain is forged.
How much time until we get some Phorusrhacidae to take over the world?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorusrhacidae
What if they do succeed? What happens then?
Then they have some previously lost genes and gene-combinations to breed into domestic cattle.
Most of the lost genes will probably be things that got bred out because the alternatives make a better domestic animal. But some of 'em might be useful "better" stuff that just got lost by chance.
Once it's all sorted out we should end up with some new and improved breeds of cattle containing a few genetic "lost treasures"
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Now that the bovine blow-job artists of SlashDot are queueing up, on their knees, to give my member a taste. Do you plan to spit, or to swallow?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
I don't eat pigs' feet or stomachs so I don't really see a problem if the end product tastes the same. They also talked a couple of months ago about growing flesh in giant vats which would also be able to produce kosher pork.
I'll tell you what... They might not taste good!
Why is this even on SlashDot?... Why is this even on Slashdot?...Why is this even on Slashdot?