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Oldest-Ever Proteins Extracted From 3.8-Million-Year-Old Ostrich Shells (sciencemag.org)
Slashdot reader sciencehabit writes: Scientists have smashed through another time barrier in their search for ancient proteins from fossilized teeth and bones, adding to growing excitement about the promise of using proteins to study extinct animals and humans that lived more than 1 million years ago. Until now, the oldest sequenced proteins are largely acknowledged to come from a 700,000-year-old horse in Canada's Yukon territory, despite claims of extraction from much older dinosaurs. Now geneticists report that they have extracted proteins from 3.8-million-year-old ostrich egg shells in Laetoli, Tanzania, and from the 1.7-million-year-old tooth enamel of several extinct animals in Dmanisi, Georgia...extinct horses, rhinos, and deer,
This raises the inevitable question. If we ever could clone a prehistoric species...should we?
This raises the inevitable question. If we ever could clone a prehistoric species...should we?
I don't think "Should we?" is the question that will be the decision point. The decision point will be "Will it make money?" And the long term answer to that is Jurassic World, but one where the people don't get eaten.
Why would we pass up a chance to learn? Scientists from all branches of science learn by tinkering, and this would be another form, even if we only did it to validate our understanding (once sufficiently advanced) of how DNA sequences yield a very specific body pattern and size and set of behaviors.
Besides, most people forget that the environment the dinosaurs lived in was very different from ours, both in temperature/climate and air composition, making it a much more difficult problem than "can we clone them?". For example, prehistoric insects were very large, larger than what the current oxygen levels in our atmosphere could support since they don't have lungs and breathe basically via diffusion. So, for specific values of "prehistoric" the difficulties involve artificial environments.
We'll need dinosaurs to help us fight our robots when they decide to subjugate us.
p.s. - I got dibs on the movie rights.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
...where can I get some funding? There's probably all sorts of science going on down there.
and spare no expense
This raises the inevitable question. If we ever could clone a prehistoric species...should we?
Perhaps we could focus on saving the fauna we have now that is on the verge of going extinct from a variety of reasons. E.g. the African megafauna that is being poached and other species whose habitat is disappearing.
What do you think?
.. we should, I like Ostrich on my plate with brocolli, fried chip potatoes (Bratkartoffeln) and a souce made with from the rinse of the frying pan with some sour cream where the Ostrich steak was kissed by the hot steel for a short amount of time.
I like my steaks always rare - this prevents 80% of the cooks to fry the steak to shoe sole when protein extraction from that piece of charcoal is next to impossible!
"This raises the inevitable question. If we ever could clone a prehistoric species...should we?"
Of course.
Because we humans are gods (in the Greek sense of the word).
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
I don't know how the reporter thinks this discovery could ever lead to cloning of such an organism. A typical eukaryote has 20,000 to 100,000 proteins in its proteome. Even viruses could have hundreds of proteins. To clone an organism, you will need to have a full copy of its DNA (or RNA in the case of RNA viruses). That means prestine samples of all proteins from the proteome. Even having that is not enough, since going from proteins to DNA is not straightforward -- since proteins are often modified after translation. Even then, you also need non-protein encoding DNA which is just as important for the survival of the organism.
I would say it is a pipe dream to start thinking of cloning, based on finding a fragment of a pre-historic protein. Rather than speculate about cloning, there are a lot of other very useful questions this discovery can answer, such as how that protein has evolved with respect similar proteins modern variants of the same species. We could perhaps then understand what micro-evolutionary pressures could have influenced (or not influenced) the evolution of a species such as an ostrich which has survived all these years.
"Fighting terrorists with millitary might is like killing a mosquitor on your Dad's forehead with a rifle."
"This raises the inevitable question. If we ever could clone a prehistoric species...should we?"
This find raises no such question. Proteins have nothing to do with cloning.
For that you need DNA. We can reconstruct genomes of some ancient animals, that died within the last few tens of thousands of years and were preserved in frozen strata. Clever reconstructions are necessary to put the fragments back together, but still here are usually errors and gaps that must be filled in with modern related organisms. Older DNA is probably hopeless for organism reconstruction, though the fragments can be used for taxonomic work.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
This raises the inevitable question: Do Slashdot editors even understand the articles they submit?
"This raises the inevitable question. If we ever could clone a prehistoric species...should we?"
First, thanks for not using 'begs the question'.
Second, sure, we should clone a Neanderthal to challenge the Donald.
This is all false. The Earth is only 3,000 years old. Mike Huckabee told me so. Humans rode dinosaurs and CO2 cools the Earth. #Trump2016!
You can't clone an organism from a protein sequence, so I don't see how finding one raises the "If we ever could clone a prehistoric species...should we?" question at all ... Get an intact 3.8 million year old DNA sequence of a critter with a closely related living relative, and then we can have a fun and interesting debate!
That's what I want to know!
Despite claims? The sequences are publicly available: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/P0C2W2.2 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/P0C2W4.1
We should totally bring them back. And not just for the inevitable Lulz that would come from the poorly informed religious crazies doing their nuts. We could learn staggering amounts about life itself, not to mention the evolutionary process by studying them. I know they wouldn't be perfect replicas, coded instincts may be lost etc, but the sheer volume and quality of data we would generate in even trying would be incredibly beneficial. Not to mention that a properly funded program would be the biotech equivalent of the Apollo missions in terms of advancement, new tech and economic benefit.
I can see strong ethical questions being raised if this were some kind of proto-ape or early human species under discussion. I don't see any ethical question about bringing back a bird or other kind of mammal.
Headline is wrong . . . soft tissue (proteins) has been found in 68 million year old Tyrannosaurus Rex fossils.
yes we should clone a big ass dinosaur!!!! I will be the first in line to eat a steak-a-saurus
Silly ITboys think they know something because they read a puff PR squib from some overheated "university" press office.
Spare us please! The oldest protein found thus far is 40 times older, collagen from a hadrosaur (dinosaur) bone:
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090430/full/news.2009.422.html
Thanks for trying, now stay off the frequency!
You never know what important information you will learn when pursuing any knowledge. The number of discoveries made by "studying something else" are uncountable: penicillin, dynamite, and amnesia inducing timetravel are just three examples of this.
Most obviously, resurrecting dead species could help us understand evolution better, or even help us with conservation of existing species by examining what is different and what is the same. Bringing mammoths back could help in our understanding of elephants. Resurrecting dinosaurs and studying their immune systems could help us understand the immune system of chickens and other fowl (descended from dinosaurs). We simply can't understand the benefit before we try.
Above all that though is the aesthetics. There is a secondary benefit to all this, replicating the beauty and nature that have been lost to us.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Sure. Yet, firstly, we should evolve into a truly responsible species!
That is, we need to really be sure we know how to correctly do it, and are fully able to realize the full extent, and ramifications, beyond any doubt, of what we are doing.
Obviously, the vast majority of our species are simply stuck at the "monkey with a machine gun" mentality.
e.g.:
Jihadists: Do they really think they got it right?
Trump supporters: Do they actually realize what they'd be voting for?
Nuclear power: Now what do we do with all that waste?
Genetic engineering: Is that corn strain really 100% safe to use? No side effects via consumer (human or other) evolvement? --etc., etc., etc...
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.