Designer Animals: An invention for destruction? - Jurassic World Edition

By,  

Hiba Tanvir

Scientists have been engineering and experimenting with new inventions for centuries, in which some of them have been remarkably successful while others failed in many aspects, in ethics to be precise. Although it all depends on the viewpoints of every individual, we can't ignore the concomitant of these creations. One of the biggest models of these inventions is the designer animals like the highwire giraffes, beaked porcupines, and reflective cats. We wonder what's next, dinosaurs? 

                                        Jurassic Park Dinosaurs 2015

If you have seen Jurassic Park, you would know that it is not a good idea to engage with dinosaurs, especially in laboratories. However, even with the horrifying events that transpired from the cloning of dinosaurs displayed in the movie, scientists are still trying to engineer a living dinosaur. Except to begin with that, they need to first experiment with the non-extinct animals. That is the only pathway to determine whether if cloning extinct dinosaurs is possible. 

This is where the designer Kathryn Fleming comes into the picture, creating models of some of her synthetic animals using taxidermy for her project Modern Naturalism that includes beasts like a beaked porcupine that can lay eggs, the superbivore, a kind of souped-up deer/giraffe that can tightrope walk, and the cat-dog mix with reflective fur that wards off prey. Her biological models and designed interactions aim to question the cultural institutions through which humans interact with animals and speculate about the future potential of human and animal evolution. 

The world’s first tightrope-walking giraffe-Superbivore by Kathryn Fleming

The Hammond Creation Lab - Jurassic World

This is not the first time an idea like this has been proposed in the world. Jurassic World movies have made us familiar with how science works in the concept of evolution and genetic engineering. In Jurassic World, scientists were shown cloning and genetically modifying and eventually discovering ways to develop terrifying new breeds of massive dinosaurs, using the DNA of different species of reptiles, birds, and mammals, not only to bring them back from the oblivion of extinction but also augmented and customized for a demanding public in search of even greater thrills. The movie itself is a work of art by the depiction of newly designed dinosaur species with many different traits, something much similar to the designer pets these days. However, these pets are very much real, unlike the dinosaurs shown in the movie.

Jurassic World - Baby Indominus Rex

How many times have you seen flat-faced pugs or miniature horses? English Lop rabbits? Or a very flat-faced Persian cat? All of these animals are designed by humans by methods of specific cross-breeding: A cross-bred animal that has purebred parents, usually registered with a breed registry, but from two different breeds. These animals are the result of a deliberate decision to create a specific cross-bred animal. They are also some of the most at risk for health problems and shortened life spans as more and more pet owners seek out designer and hybrid dogs with attractive traits, despite warnings from vets. Nevertheless, there is a much bigger picture of animal biotechnology than just swaying pet owners with adorable pets. Agriculture contributes to a great percentage of the economy, which means scientists prefer to focus more on animal biotechnology for designer livestock. 

Source by Earth.com

In the mid-1990s, microbiologist Cecil Forsberg of the University of Guelph in Ontario and his colleagues thought to have achieved a pig production breakthrough: they had genetically engineered swine that could digest the phosphorous compounds in their feed. The Enviropig, as it came to be known, produced manure with lower levels of phosphorus, notorious for leaching into groundwater beneath pig farms and fueling algal growth in local streams and lakes, sustaining the environment. But like most plants or animals whose genomes have been engineered, commonly called genetically modified (GM) organisms, the pigs were not so well received by the public. 

The newer, cleaner pigs. (Photo: Dr. Cecil Forsberg)

Although the production of these genetically modified pigs was banned, the product closest to approval is the AquAdvantage salmon, created by Garth Fletcher and colleagues at the Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1989 with the insertion of a growth hormone gene from Chinook salmon and a promoter from the eel-like ocean pout into fertilized Atlantic salmon eggs. “By the end of 1990, we could say, ‘Yep, those rapidly growing fish are the ones that are carrying the growth-hormone gene,’” says Fletcher, a now semiretired fish physiologist who oversaw the development of the salmon, which grows to market size in half the time it takes conventionally farmed fish. So, how were the designer animals made possible? The answer behind it is the cloning of the first animal from an adult cell, Dolly.

Photo courtesy of The Roslin Institute,
The University of Edinburgh

Dolly the sheep was produced by cloning a genetically modified cell using somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). Dolly was created from DNA taken from a cell taken from a sheep in 1997. The technique involved putting the DNA into an empty eggshell and then zapping it with electricity. This created an embryo. It took 277 attempts to clone Dolly, and there were many miscarriages on the way. Researchers at Roslin then implanted the embryo into the womb of a sheep that grew into Dolly - an exact genetic copy of the sheep from which the skin cell was taken. Although she was not genetically modified as she was created using an unmodified cell. This was a remarkable scientific achievement. It promised new treatments for debilitating diseases. But it also raises fears of cloned dinosaurs. 

It is proven that DNA breaks down over time. The dinosaurs went extinct around 66 million years ago, and with so much time has passed, it is very unlikely that any dinosaur DNA would remain today. While dinosaur bones can last for millions of years, dinosaur DNA almost assuredly does not. Therefore it looks like cloning a dinosaur is not possible for now, but an alternate way to recreate the lost animals would be to reverse-engineer one. This requires starting with a living animal and working backward towards ancient reptiles, venturing to reverse at least 66 million years of evolution.

An effort to resurrect dinosaurs entails many predicaments scientifically and ethically - making things to put in zoos or amusement parks like Jurassic World likely are not the solution. Hence, right now, dinosaurs are probably going to stay securely in the past. But using genetic engineering to bring back extinct animals might be considered plausible in some cases.

Thank you for reading! 

References:

Brunk, C., & Hartley, S. (Eds.). (2012). Designer Animals: Mapping the Issues in Animal Biotechnology. Toronto; Buffalo; London: University of Toronto Press. Retrieved December 2, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/9781442662636

The Rosaline Institue. (1996). Cloning dolly the sheep. Retrieved December 02, 2020, from http://www.animalresearch.info/en/medical advances/timeline/cloning-dolly-the-sheep/

Cban. (2019, March 19). What is "Enviropig™"? Retrieved December 02, 2020, from https://cban.ca/gmos/products/ge-animals/enviropig/what-is-enviropig/

Shuipys, T. (2020, August 12). Real-life Jurassic Park? Recovered prehistoric DNA raises the prospect of resurrecting species. Retrieved December 02, 2020, from https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2020/08/11/real-life-jurassic-park-recovered-prehistoric-dna-raises-prospect-of-resurrecting-species/

Jones, J. (2015, March 10). Designer animals: Scary science or superb satire? Retrieved December 02, 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/mar/10/kathyrn-fleming-bizarre-designer-animals-art-project

A.L. Van Eenennaam, W.M. Muir, “Transgenic salmon: a final leap to the grocery shelf?” Nat Biotech, 29:706-10, 2011.

S.G. Lillico et al., “Live pigs produced from genome edited zygotes,” Scientific Reports, 3:2847, 2013

Howarth, D. (2020, August 26). Kathryn Fleming's engineered animals could survive extinction. Retrieved December 02, 2020, from https://www.dezeen.com/2015/03/10/kathryn-fleming-synthetic-biology-engineer-animals-survive-extinction-endless-species-cat-dog-hybrid-design-indaba-2015/