Genetically Modified Animals: Jurassic World and Real World

By: Insha Mushtaq

Creating genetically modified animals have been a scientist’s goal since genetic engineering had shown some progress in the realm of treating or modifying tissue with the help of gene cloning, gene therapy, or gene editing. Moreover, with the rapid advancement and adaptation of science, genetic engineering has prospered a great amount and has been constantly showing some promising outcomes in genetically improving species for the better. However, humans get crazy when they think about genetically modified animals, especially in movies where their practical implications and limitations can be dodged. Sci-fi movies like Jurassic World, which is built around the notion of genetically modified animals, the directors tend to lean more towards the fiction side and sadly undermine the practical aspect of it. And perhaps that is the reason why sometimes the most basic science is ignored when making a science fiction movie.

Simpler visual of how scientists take out genomes from the DNA of an organism 

But what is a genetically modified animal?

With the help of humans, genetically modified animals have their genes artificially modified by using modern genetic manipulation techniques. The process is slow, tedious, and expensive. The scientists take the DNA of an organism and in the process, change the genome which is essentially a set of a gene or genetic material present in the cell. So with the change of genome, the entire characteristics of an organism can be altered. The genetically modified animals can be used for several purposes like producing drugs, enhancing yield, and increasing resistance to disease etcetera.

Genetically modified rats and pigs

Have we genetically modified animals before?

Humans have been artificially modifying the genomes of plants and animals for thousands of years with the help of selective breeding. In the process of selective breeding, the organism with the desired traits are used to breed the next generation, similarly, the organism that lacks that trait is not bred. This process used to take a lot of time previously, but today, with the advances in genetic engineering techniques, we can speed up this process by incorporating specific new genes from one species into a completely unrelated species. GMO’s (Genetically Modified Organisms) are used for many purposes, however, modifying farm animals have been one of the major use of GMOs. Apart from that, there are genetically modified mosquitoes that help in containing dengue, spider-goat to yield more spider silk, and cows that make human milk, etc.

Goat, genetically modified to produce spider silk 

GMOs in the Jurassic World

In the Jurassic World, scientists genetically brought the dinosaurs back to the world. This was the result of mixing the DNA traits of multiple different species. There were a handful of different dinosaur species mixed in including tyrannosaurus rex, velociraptors, carnosaurs, giganotosaurus, Rugops as well as a few more. Moreover, the DNA was also spliced with modern animals like cuttlefish, the tree frog, and the viper snake. The essential reason for creating the gigantic dinosaur which was “The Indominus Rex” was to weaponize it and in the long run use dinosaurs in military operations. And this is where the movie comes remarkably close to reality because scientists in real life are already on their way to genetically modify animals for military use.

Can we bring the dinasours back?

No matter how fascinating the idea of bringing back dinosaurs seems, in reality, we are not even close to bringing dinosaurs back, yet. Because recent findings have shown that DNA sequences long enough to be usable and readable for cloning purposes probably can’t survive more than 1.5 million years with the oldest known DNA sample coming from a 700,000-year-old horse. With dinosaurs exiting the world stage some 65 million years ago, finding useful dinosaur DNA trapped in amber is probably pure science fiction.

My take on the topic:

Genetically Modified Animals is a very much real and practical notion that is also being practiced for multiple purposes, mostly for health objectives. But it seems very likely that GMOs would be used for military purposes soon, as stronger animals that could also be trained can be very useful. However, this also brings ethical dilemmas as every action has a consequence and when we will modify an animal, or perhaps bring back a species or even create another one, it will have multiple ramifications on the environment and on the eco-system as a whole.

However, with the advancement and rapid growth of science, the world is changing and we fortunately or unfortunately have no option but to accept this change and adapt our lives with respect to it. Apart from that, I think that even though bringing back a dinosaur is not a possibility currently but with the scope of science, everything can be done, even bring back the dinosaurs.

Bibliography 

Blitz, M. (2018). The Real Science of Bringing Back the Dinosaurs. Popular Mechanics
Katrina. (2020). GMOs | Genetics | Biology. eSchool - Global Education. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vribRyVQ6G8
Wikipedia. (n.d.). Genetically modified animal. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_animal