'I can create Neanderthal baby'

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by ScaryMonster, Jan 22, 2013.

  1. ScaryMonster I’m the whispered word. Valued Senior Member

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    I saw this article by Rebecca Smith in London, I thought the implications might make for an interesting discussion here.

    A Harvard scientist has said it would be possible to clone a Neanderthal baby from ancient DNA if he could find a woman willing to act as a surrogate. The process would not be legal in many countries and would involve using DNA extracted from fossils.

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    George Church, a genetics professor of Harvard School of Medicine, said that the process was possible and that far from being brutal and primitive, Neanderthals were intelligent beings.
    They are believed to be one of the relatives of modern man and became extinct 33,000 years ago. He added that altering the human genome could also provide the answers to curing diseases such as cancer and HIV, and hold the key to living to 120.
    He told Der Spiegel, the German magazine: "I have already managed to attract enough DNA from fossil bones to reconstruct the DNA of the human species largely extinct. Now I need an adventurous female human."
    The professor claims that he could introduce parts of the Neanderthal genome to human stem cells and clone them to create a foetus that could then be implanted in a woman.
    Professor Church helped start the Human Genome Project that mapped human DNA and is well respected in the field. His comments will surprise most geneticists who believe that cloning humans is unacceptable. It is illegal in Britain.
    Professor Church said: "We can clone all kinds of mammals, so it's very likely that we could clone a human. Why shouldn't we be able to do so?"
    He added: "Neanderthals might think differently than we do. We know that they had a larger cranial size. They could even be more intelligent than us.

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    "When the time comes to deal with an epidemic or getting off the planet or whatever, it's conceivable that their way of thinking could be beneficial. They could maybe even create a new neo-Neanderthal culture and become a political force. The main goal is to increase diversity. The one thing that is bad for society is low diversity."

    Professor Church said the technique would involve artificially creating DNA from fossilised material and introducing this into human stem cell lines.

    He discusses his idea in his latest book, Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves.

    He rules out recreating older human ancestors or dinosaurs, as was the subject of the Jurassic Park films, because the age limit of useful DNA is about one million years, he said.

    He told the magazine: "One of the things to do is to engineer our cells so that they have a lower probability of cancer.

    "And then once we have a lower probability of cancer, you can crank up their self-renewal properties, so that they have a lower probability of senescence [ageing]."

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  3. orcot Valued Senior Member

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    I have no problem with wanting to recreate Neanderthals you can ever wonder why we would stop with them (homo sapiens idaltu; homo heidelberg; homo rhodesiences;homo antecessor; homo cepransis and homo erectus)link should all deserve the same treatment.

    That said I remember the last time people have resurrected a extinct species the pyrenean ibex they managed to produce a living offspring but a lung defect killed it within hours and even if it had survived that a problem with it's telomeres would still have shortened it's lifespan.

    I believe they should first perfect their technology and try recreating something like a wooly mammoth until their technique has a reasonable change for succes. Because having human (homo sapiens) women giving birth to heavily deformed babys that die shortly afther birth or have little change to live to adulthood would kill this project rather quick.
     
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  5. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    I don't think we should bring back anything that died out naturally. Bring back something that we stupidly wiped out like the passenger pigeon or the dodo bird
     
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  7. elte Valued Senior Member

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    I think they should try something similar on mice first because the mouse short life span would enable quicker evaluation of the results.

    However, I think similar techniques ought to be able to be used to cure diseases in people, the way they exist now, by taking DNA from cells in a person's body to reconstruct a young, healthy sample of DNA. Then reproduce that young DNA and use it for treatment purposes.
     
  8. Rhaedas Valued Senior Member

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  9. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

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    Neanderthals did not die out. Homo sapiens simply out numbered them 10 to 1 and absorbed them into our own DNA pool. The mixing maxed with the Caucasian race at about 3%. Anyway that is the latest thinking that was presented on one of the science channels about Neanderthals. That program aired about a month ago. It was well presented and I buy it 100%. As far as I'm concerned if we can recover enough DNA to produce a complete modern Neanderthal, we would be doing the human race a disservice by not doing so and losing any advantages we might be able to gain by doing so.
     
  10. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

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    The following site does a very good job of putting Neanderthals in perspective. I picked a good starting point, but the entire site is a very good read.

    Ancient DNA and Neanderthals
     
  11. orcot Valued Senior Member

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    It is good to hear that it was a false alarm, the current techniques aren't advanced enough to try to do something like this.

    But I'm somewhat surprised to see how many people have moral objections against this idea (not necesairly here on sciforums but on the net in general).
    I also have moral objections but they are of a practical nature like their ability to actually do this with a minimum of risk to the both the mother and defects to the child.

    There would seem to be many reasons to do this and not many reasons not to do this.

    George church (the man from the article) speaks abouth neurodiversity and it's true (I believe) that having a second slightly different set of conscience minds will tell us more abouth intelligence and produce most of the memorable folks that ever did something interesting showed signs of autism for science, schizofrenia for religion, adhd for artists.

    there are other reasons as well
     
  12. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    It really not a easy tasks, first we need to master human cloning before we can try to replace a homo sapian genome step wise with a reconstructed Neanderthal genome and then try to grow a hominid baby from it.

    So first things first: Verify we can grow human clones successfully and repeatable and finally safely. That is not an easy task considering all the laws against it. Maybe we could try a chimp clone first?
     
  13. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    And how do we know it wasn't modern humans who killed them?
     
  14. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

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    I imagine there were some killings, but we also have Neanderthal DNA in our selves from 1 to 4% and that would imply co-mingling. We were able to breed with them. We out numbered them and over thousands of years our greater population just absorbed them into our culture and society, and the few percentage points of DNA is all that's left of them. It's a different way of going extinct as a species but I guess the end result is the same.
     
  15. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    How do you know that the major cause of Neanderthal extinction wasn't genocide? If we really co-mingled then shouldn't we have more than 1 to 4% of their DNA?
     
  16. orcot Valued Senior Member

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    I don't see how bones will ever give a definitive answer to that particulair answer the importent thing is that they went extinct the rest will probably tell more abouth the person stating the idea then give any true insight on what had happened.

    For the study of extinct cloning the Pyrenean ibex would seem as good as any other, then their is the wooly mammoth and tasmanian devil
     
  17. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

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    I found the Nova program I watched, on YouTube. Please find the time to watch it. It made a believer out of me and I also enjoyed watching it, very well done.

    NOVA: Decoding Neanderthals
     
    Last edited: Jan 23, 2013
  18. Randwolf Ignorance killed the cat Valued Senior Member

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    Tasmanian devils aren't extinct.
     
  19. RedRabbit Registered Senior Member

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    I don't see the difference to be honest.
     
  20. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

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    Neither are wolves and bears, but we don't have dire wolves or short faced bears anymore.
     
  21. Walter L. Wagner Cosmic Truth Seeker Valued Senior Member

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    Do you have any evidence? They went extinct last century so far as western science knows.
     
  22. typical animal Registered Member

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    Maybe we "mingled" a little better than the Neanderthals, so to speak.
     
  23. orcot Valued Senior Member

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    Sorry I was thinking abouth tasmanian tigers. But the way this guy is planning it (george church) does the animal have to be extinct? He changes the DNA from one species to another the way I understand it (I know that isn't much) then creating a bonobo out of a chimpanzee would be a good test (both bonobos and chimpanzees are from the same familie [pan]) the process should be faily similar to humans and neanderthals with the exception that bonobos aren't extinct
     

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