slh

Does any of you folks think that at some time, with the advances of genetic manipulation, that we might be able to transplant physical properties of one species into another? For instance take the genes that spiders have to develope silk glands and incorporate that into human beings.

I was thinking about it and I figured that you probably could splice the gene into a human or whatever, but the real issue is how to code it to manifest in a certain way. Or, where do you put the silk making organ? How would you get the silk out? I use the spider as an example because having silk glands would require a whole new system and not just a modification of an existing organ like having razor keen eyes from an eagle for example.

Corwin

I remember a while back someone managed to splice genes from a spider into.... sheep I think. Either sheep or goats. (Clearly I don't remember specifics, this was some time back.)

Spinnarets aren't all that different from mammary glands physically. (They're different, but not nearly as different as one might think.) So the gist of the article was that they were working on goats that could be 'milked' for silk. This was.... last year? Possibly the year before? And I haven't heard anything since then so I have no idea what's become of it since then. For all I know the goats might have developed horrible mutations and cancers and the whole thing might have gotten quietly swept under the carpet.

theyeti

Yes, this has already been done, and work continues on this today. Most boiengineered plants for example contain genes that are not native to their species. And then there's the spider silk in the sheep's milk that Corwin mentioned. Yes, it's been done.
So that we can make a real life Spider Man, and have him go around solving crimes? It would take less work just to make a gang of meddlesome kids who drive around in their van with a talking dog.

Seriously, why would anyone want to do such a thing? It typically takes many, many trials to produce a healthy transgenic. If you can find someone to condone making bunches of dead or deformed babies for what appears to be a pointless experiment, I'll be surprised. Making transgenic animals is one thing, but transgenic humans will probably be out of the question.

If you're talking about an organ you would need a lot more than one gene and a lot more scientific knowledge than we have now. With the sheep, they just put the silk protein gene with (I think) a tissue-specific promoter, the tissue being the mammaries. the protein has to be purified out of the milk. What they do with it then I don't know. I suggest doing s google search if you're really interested though.

theyeti

Corwin

Given time I suspect that transgenic humans would be possible, but generally not worth the effort. It would be a lot easier to modify the existing human genome... which could provide some pretty impressive results as it is. Adding in new genes from other species would be problematic, and similar results could be gained from modifying human DNA. (Depending on the trait you're looking for of course. Making spiderman would be out of the question, but making someone just generally stronger and faster would be quite possible, and we're approaching the level where we could do something like that.)

slh

Obviously Spider-Man does come to mind. I also just realized that you wouldnt necessarily have to re-create organs specificly how the originating species has them. There could be more than one way to skin a cat...or create and expel silk.

I guess making 'bird-men' or whatever would be far down the line.

Corwin

Creating bird men would involve either having them live in their own isolated communities built especially for them, or totally restructuring our own society to accomodate humans with a 50' wingspan.

Not exactly the most workable plan.

Generally you can't add in just ONE trait from another species unless there's already something similar in the recipient to accomodate it. Adding wings to humans won't allow us to fly. Our muscle and bone structures are dramatically too heavy, and our balance point is different.

At that point you'd essentially be designing an entirely new species, and would do just as well starting entirely from scratch rather than modifying humans.

nogods4me

I think we might want to start out a bit smaller in scope. how about we just turn back on the gene that would allow us to manufacture vitamin C.

Corwin

That's the sort of thing I'm talking about. Modifying the existing genome would be a lot easier and can produce some pretty damn impressive results.... thing is you have to be careful. It's a good idea to know WHY a given gene was selected out before you tinker with it.... there might be a very good reason for a trait to have become dormant. Or not. Biology is funny that way.

theyeti

Why? It's not like scurvy is a problem in the industrialized world, which is the only place where this technology is available. One transgenic human will cost more than thousands of acres of orange trees.

Or if we decide that scurvy really is a problem, we could much more easily have common crops like rice or wheat make vitamin C. They are either working on or have already made rice that produces beta carotene, which is a precursor of vitamin A.

theyeti

Gringo

When we're able to get out of this solar system and exlpore terrestrial planets in other parts of our galaxy, genetic engineering might be useful in adapting to new and hostile worlds. Maybe one day, we'll have descendants that look like all the characters from the various Star Wars movies, except hopefully not that turd looking creature, Java the Hut or Jar Jar. Extinction is better than some alternatives.