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	<title type="html"><![CDATA[Ask a Biologist Q&A - Is it possible to clone dinosaurs]]></title>
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	<updated>2007-02-01T17:36:17Z</updated>
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			<title type="html"><![CDATA[Re: Is it possible to clone dinosaurs]]></title>
			<link rel="alternate" href="http://www.askabiologist.org.uk/answers/viewtopic.php?pid=96#p96"/>
			<content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>The most common way of cloning an animal is what&#039;s called a Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer. That&#039;s where a nucleus (containing the DNA of the animal) from a somatic cell (a cell that&#039;s neither a sperm nor an egg) is transferred into an egg cell whose nucleus has been removed. In the case of mammals, the egg is then implanted into a mother&nbsp; and incubated until a baby clone is born!</p><p>If you want to clone a dinosaur this way, then you&#039;d need a nucleus from a dinosaur cell. But you&#039;d also probably need a dinosaur egg to transfer it to. Dinosaur genes will create dinosaur proteins which would probably work best in dinosaur cells. Well, maybe they might work in bird cells but that&#039;s something we don&#039;t know.</p><p>Dinosaur cells are really difficult to come across. Even if you do find one, the DNA and any associating proteins would most likely be destroyed through the processes of fossilisation.</p>]]></content>
			<author>
				<name><![CDATA[Manabu Sakamoto]]></name>
				<uri>http://www.askabiologist.org.uk/answers/profile.php?id=38</uri>
			</author>
			<updated>2007-02-01T17:36:17Z</updated>
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		<entry>
			<title type="html"><![CDATA[Re: Is it possible to clone dinosaurs]]></title>
			<link rel="alternate" href="http://www.askabiologist.org.uk/answers/viewtopic.php?pid=94#p94"/>
			<content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>Hi Evan,</p><p>Fortunately, or unfortunately (if you like), we cannot clone dinosaurs.&nbsp; We simply do not have any&nbsp; DNA to reconstruct the genome of a dinosaur.&nbsp; Bone marrow and blood, the best parts of an animal to get DNA from don&#039;t survive the fossilisation process to provide the complete sequence of DNA required (although some scientists claim to have extracted fragments of DNA fom the long bones (legs) of dinosaurs).</p><p>The ideas in Jurassic Park were fun, and made a good story.&nbsp; However, even if you take &#039;biting insects&#039; from amber (to look for blood from the last meal they ate, before becoming entombed in tree sap) there are two problems:&nbsp; Firstly the blood that they are eating is a meal, so it will be (in the process of being) digested, and secondly we don&#039;t have any amber with biting insects in as old as the dinosaurs (to the best of our knowledge). </p><p>The book&nbsp; &#039;The Science of &quot;Jurassic Park&quot; and the &quot;Lost World&quot;: How to Build a Dinosaur&#039; by Rob DeSalle and David Lindley is a fun read that will highlight all the problems (from the point of view of Jurassic Park at least) in making a dinosaur.&nbsp; However, one group of dinosaurs is still with us.&nbsp; The birds are avian (flying) theropod dinosaurs.&nbsp; They have no teeth like their non-avian (non-flying) relatives but they still have many of the genes required to make them.&nbsp; These genes have just been switched off.&nbsp; Developmental biologists have been able to switch them back on, in the embryos of chickens, so that teeth actually start to develop.<br />So, as the &#039;Science of Jurassic Park&#039; suggests, maybe the way to get a sort of dinosaur is to reverse engineer a chicken, but we will never be able to bring&nbsp; T. rex back from the dead.</p>]]></content>
			<author>
				<name><![CDATA[Neil Gostling]]></name>
				<uri>http://www.askabiologist.org.uk/answers/profile.php?id=17</uri>
			</author>
			<updated>2007-01-30T14:06:25Z</updated>
			<id>http://www.askabiologist.org.uk/answers/viewtopic.php?pid=94#p94</id>
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		<entry>
			<title type="html"><![CDATA[Is it possible to clone dinosaurs]]></title>
			<link rel="alternate" href="http://www.askabiologist.org.uk/answers/viewtopic.php?pid=91#p91"/>
			<content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>Is it really possible to clone a dinosaur?</p>]]></content>
			<author>
				<name><![CDATA[Evan]]></name>
			</author>
			<updated>2007-01-29T15:41:56Z</updated>
			<id>http://www.askabiologist.org.uk/answers/viewtopic.php?pid=91#p91</id>
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