Andrew Tenjo
Mr. Curran
Composition I
11/18/2018
The Dino-Chicken Project
Jack Horner is a paleontologist with a passion for learning about the past. He is currently working on a project that will reverse engineer the genes of a chicken into a dinosaur, called the Dino-chicken project. The theory is that all the genes for dinosaur like features lie dormant inside of a chicken. We just have to figure out which genes we need to turn on; and the only way to find out is through research, and trial and error. Which brings us to some concerning questions regarding the project: What are the benefits and cons of genetic manipulation, is it acceptable to use chickens for testing in the pursuit for knowledge, and what can we learn from creating a dino-chicken?
In order to find out the pros and cons of genetic manipulation we must first figure out what genetic manipulation is. Genetic manipulation or genetic engineering is a set of tools used to change the genetic makeup of an organism by turning on or off genes, or to move the genes from one creature to another in order to create a new organism. One of the main tools used for genetic manipulation is called CRISPR. CRISPR is an acronym for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat. CRISPR is used to cut out DNA strands and replace them with new strands given to CRISPR.
Now that we know about the information behind genetic manipulation, we can now talk about the pros and cons of genetic manipulation. The pros of genetic manipulation are advanced medical treatment, better pharmaceuticals, solving pregnancy cases before they happen, and advanced agriculture. Medical treatment is being advanced by genetic manipulation in ways such as gene therapy. Gene therapy is used to treat defective genes by replacing them with healthy ones or by inserting therapeutic genes to fight the disease. Pharmaceuticals are being improved by genetic manipulation by being able to create in lab certain genes necessary for some products, making today’s pharmaceuticals far superior than their predecessors. Pregnancy cases are becoming more efficiently solved through genetic manipulation. Expecting mothers are able to come and get their fetuses screened for genetic defects. This allows the mother and the doctor to properly prepare for if the baby requires certain attention when it is born. Research on gene therapy for embryos is currently being pursued, which will allow the baby to be cured of its genetic defects before it is even born; and eventually this research will open the door to “designer babies,” where expecting parents can choose the features they want their baby to have. Agriculture is probably the area being most benefited from genetic manipulation because it has allowed pants to be more resilient to drought, salinity, viruses, and reducing the need for nitrogen fertilizer.
Although it is clear that genetic manipulation certainly has its advantages there may still be lines that are better left uncrossed. The cons of genetic manipulation are overpopulation, limiting of diversity, and lack of job opportunities. Overpopulation may be caused by genetic manipulation because of the advancements in medical treatments eliminating diseases and genetic defects, causing us to prolong our lifespan and in turn creating an overpopulated planet with not enough food. Genetic diversity will be greatly diminished by genetic manipulation because parents will want their child to have the best genes possible, and if every person has the same genes it will limit diversity that is important to all animals in the animal kingdom. Eventually with a rise in people with superior traits, employers will begin to target those people to hire leaving people with a lack of superior traits to become jobless and eventually die out.
An issue that seems to linger within the dino-chicken project is whether or not it is acceptable to use chickens for testing in the pursuit of knowledge. In order to answer this we have to broaden our outlook onto animal testing in general. The benefits that animal testing has provided includes life saving cures and treatments, and some of them have DNA very similar to humans which makes them acceptable test subjects. Within the past 100 years nearly every breakthrough resulted from research using animals, as stated by the California Biomedical Research Association. Some animals such as chimpanzees and mice have DNA very similar to that of humans; and all mammals are descendants from the same ancestor, which means we have the same organs and are susceptible to the same diseases, which makes them an acceptable test subject. With all of this in mind, chickens should be allowed as an acceptable test subject for the Dino-chicken project because chickens are mainly seen as a provider of food. Approximately nine billion chickens are eaten in the United States, and about 26 million animals are used for research purposes. Chickens have been bred for one purpose and that is to provide us with eggs, and/or to provide us with poultry meat. The Dino-chicken project is an opportunity to give these chickens a new purpose, to become more than just food.
The results of the Dino-chicken project will provide a huge well of discovery to scientists; specifically biologists, geneticists, and paleontologists; but it will also provide an experience to people. When the Dino-chicken project is complete, paleontologists will be able to study the growth cycle of the chickenosaurus, which should resemble the growth cycle of a theropod dinosaur; and they can study the parenting instincts/behavior of a chickenosaurus. Biologists and geneticist will be able to study the embryonic development of a chickenosaurus from two parent chickenosaurs and will be able to learn if the manipulated genes are passed onto the next generation or if they revert back to a normal chicken. The reason Jack Horner started the Dino-chicken project was because he had always wanted a pet dinosaur; and when this project is complete, not only will Jack Horner achieve his dream but ordinary people can also have a pet chickenosaur.
Now that we have seen the argument behind these questions we can now make our own opinions on this topic. With the knowledge gained from this project we can move past chickens and possibly bring out dinosaur like features from ostriches or cassowaries. If we wanted too we could move to mammals and reverse engineer a wolf into a dire wolf.
Works Cited
Dance, Amber. “Core Concept: CRISPR gene editing”. PNAS. Vol. 112, No. 20 (05/19/15): 6245-6246.
“Alternatives to Animal Testing: A Review.” NeuroImage, Academic Press, 18 Nov. 2013, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1319016413001096.
“Animal Testing – ProCon.org.” Should Animals Be Used for Scientific or Commercial Testing?, animal-testing.procon.org/.
“Benefits of Genetic Engineering.” BiologyWise, BiologyWise, 19 Jan. 2018, biologywise.com/benefits-of-genetic-engineering.
“Pros and Cons of Genetic Engineering.” Conserve Energy Future, 9 Dec. 2017, www.conserve-energy-future.com/pros-and-cons-of-genetic-engineering.php.