De-Extinction

By Laila Brown

Hello everyone! Some of you may have seen Jurassic Park. In the movie they talk about De-extinction. Today I'm talking about actual real life De-extinction.

De-extinction is a biology that brings back animals from extinction by cloning, back-breeding, and genetic engineering.

There are many ways scientists can De-extinct but the most famous and interesting way is Genetic Engineering.

An important step is building the base for the animal. One thing they won't do is build the animal from scratch. It would take about 10 to 15 years of highly advanced work and animal births from a single DNA swab. The way scientists work around this is by finding the closest relative to the animal. They carefully find every chemical letter using a machine called a gene sequencer. It compares the DNA of the relative to the DNA of the animal, and then scientists have to write every single change they need to make in their DNA. 

The next step is actually changing the DNA of the relative. They can't actually use a normal animal relative, so they use millions of the relatives' stem cells.To edit the cells, You may think they would use tools to place and remove DNA. But that is actually not the case. The way they actually make these changes to the DNA is using special liquids that the scientists will create. The mixture is called a ribonucleoprotein complex. In short form it is called RNP

To apply the RNP they have to use an electric pulse; this specific process is called electroporation.

A part of the chemical floats along each cell. Since the chemical has cells which contain letters in it, the chemical will naturally attract other letters, like how A can only lock onto T, making a whole new recombinant DNA. Once each letter locks on the millions of cells, a cutting tool immediately breaks apart the DNA. Next, cells will detect that DNA is broken and instantly triggers a survival mechanism to patch what's broken. Since the chemical flooded the cell with the New Code, the cell grabs the extinct animal's DNA pieces by mistake (which was actually intended by the scientists) and weaves them into the broken gap on the relative animal, and then glues the DNA back together. This basically ALMOST weaves all the DNA needed to produce the animal. 

The reason I say almost is that some of the patches were incorrect so the scientists need to find the perfect cell. When they finally find the perfect cell they duplicate it in a nutrient-rich broth.

After all these processes they are ready to birth the animal. Scientists create a hybrid shark egg by using a needle to remove the DNA from the unfertilized egg, leaving a hollow shell. They then inject a nucleus containing the edited DNA, followed by an electrical pulse to fuse the new nucleus and initiate cell division.

Now that we know one of the processes for De-extinction, we can look at the animals scientists are working on resurrecting.

One of the animals they are trying to resurrect is the wooly mammoth. The relatives they used are Asian elephants. Woolly Mammoths are known for how big and dangerous they are, but they can actually be beneficial for our ecosystem. Right now, the Arctic tundra is melting, releasing dangerous greenhouse gases. If we put mammoths back there, they will stomp down the thick snow, punch through thick brushes, and let the freezing Arctic air keep the ground permanently frozen. This all means they're basically like refrigerators for cold biomes

Another animal scientists are bringing back is the Tasmanian Tiger. It looks like a dog-like pouched animal with stripes. Bringing back this animal is beneficial because the tiger was an apex predator. When an apex predator disappears, the animals they used to eat (like wallabies or kangaroos) overpopulate. They eat all the plants, ruin the rivers, and destroy the ecosystem. Bringing back the tiger will help all those issues.

Lastly, the Dodo Bird has been in the process of De-extinction. The birds lived on an island called Mauritius. And they hung out on the island's trees. Since Dodo Birds went extinct the trees lost their gardeners which means they are now facing extinction. If the dodo birds return the trees may be able to recover.

However there are some risks to bringing back all these animals. If we drop a newly engineered animal into the wild, it could possibly harm the current ecosystem. Modern animals who have adapted to new changes might have lost their defenses against a resurrected predator.

There's a lot of animals we can resurrect, but some animals you may be thinking of are not possible to De-extinct.

When most people think of extinct animals they usually think of dinosaurs. Sadly dinosaur DNA is too old, in fact they are 66 million years old and dead DNA fully breaks down in only 6 million years. Which means we can't bring back dinosaurs. Even if we could hypothetically bring them back they would starve, suffocate, and be prone to a lot of diseases because our climate has dramatically changed.

Another cool extinct animal to bring back is Neanderthal which are our human cousins. Scientists actually have the perfect Neanderthal DNA. But it would be very unethical to grow humans and cage them.Well, isn't it also unethical to cage animals? Then you are absolutely right. That is why the actual goal for animals like mammoths and dodos isn't to put them in zoos for entertainment, but to release them immediately into the wild so they can live completely free and HELP nature. And if we did bring Neanderthals back they would also be prone to modern diseases, have completely different high maintenance diets from the ice age which we cant provide. ALSO, they would feel very inhumane because human culture would be very different from Neanderthal culture. They're still humans and even if we had a room full of Neanderthals it would still be physiological torture. Plus, if we put them into our biome (because that's their biome too), they would be severely discriminated against because they look different from us. They're shorter, incredibly stalky and they have heavy eyebrow ridges. 

Some may think de-extinction would be wonderful for entertainment. I mean, couldn't you imagine seeing a wooly mammoth in our zoos? Or just solely learning about how they work. However the sole intention is to benefit our earth and our creatures not for any other reason.

Thank you.