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Invisible wrote:
> What's next? A movie where they extract dinosaur DNA from foscils a--
> hey, wait a sec...
They're actually doing this now, by the way. :-) I think they're
finding fossils with enough DNA in different places they can figure out
how to stitch together an entire genome. *And* they're comparing it to
modern reptiles.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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>> What's next? A movie where they extract dinosaur DNA from foscils a--
>> hey, wait a sec...
>
> They're actually doing this now, by the way. :-) I think they're
> finding fossils with enough DNA in different places they can figure out
> how to stitch together an entire genome. *And* they're comparing it to
> modern reptiles.
What, you mean despite the minor detail that DNA molecules slowly
decompose into simpler molecules and we're talking about animals that
lived 70,000,000 years ago? :-P
Regardless, I doubt we'll be reanimating any long-dead animals any time
soon. (And even if we did, how would we know if they are accurate
recreations or not? Certainly we couldn't observe any behaviours that
aren't innate. And so on.)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> What, you mean despite the minor detail that DNA molecules slowly
> decompose into simpler molecules and we're talking about animals that
> lived 70,000,000 years ago? :-P
Yep.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7285683/
Doing the amber trick, too:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9C00EFD61331F93BA25752C1A962958260
> Regardless, I doubt we'll be reanimating any long-dead animals any time
> soon.
Nope, likely not. Altho I wouldn't bet my life on it... :-)
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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Darren New wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> What, you mean despite the minor detail that DNA molecules slowly
>> decompose into simpler molecules and we're talking about animals that
>> lived 70,000,000 years ago? :-P
>
> Yep.
Riiiight. Oh well, please, don't let the laws of thermodymanics bother
you... ;-)
>> Regardless, I doubt we'll be reanimating any long-dead animals any
>> time soon.
>
> Nope, likely not. Altho I wouldn't bet my life on it... :-)
That's what the scientists are doing, isn't it? (If JP is anything to go
by...!) ;-)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> What, you mean despite the minor detail that DNA molecules slowly
>>> decompose into simpler molecules and we're talking about animals that
>>> lived 70,000,000 years ago? :-P
>>
>> Yep.
>
> Riiiight. Oh well, please, don't let the laws of thermodymanics bother
> you... ;-)
>
Well, to be perfectly clear decomp requires either a) enough heat to
break the molecular bonds of a material, or b) chemical reactions,
usually microbial. If the conditions that preserve something doesn't
produce the former, and the later is suspended or halted, then you don't
get as "fast" a decomp. Its.. like the difference between sticking an
book on a shelf for 500 years, or in a sealed glass case, with an inert
gas. The former is going to disintegrate at a rate that varies a great
deal on humidity, temperature, and if anything touches it at all, the
later, might last a billion years, presuming the seal never fails.
However, "some" of the legibility, structure, etc. will fail, so you get
a very fragile, and possibly partly damaged, copy when its all over.
That said, there is also the matter that "some" DNA is more resistant to
that erosion too, so lasts longer (in fact, one entire species, called
water bears, could conceivably survive thousands, or maybe even
millions, of years, in extreme dry, cold, or vacuum, and come back to
life when the conditions allow (they don't really know how long the
things "can" survive in a dormant state, but some revived in like... 200
year old moss, or something). This is because the molecular bonds, sans
anything to "actively" disrupt them, will remain "sort of" intact, and
its possible for some configurations to be so stable, even in a
multi-cell organism, so as to come close to making them indestructible,
at least within a survivable range of conditions. And, finally, its
possible from "some" structure to maybe be preserves, even if some
replacement happens, in which case, since the replacement is likely to
be a chemical process itself, as long as "most" of the structure is
intact, you might be able to predict what was replaced, based on simple
chemical rules.
All of which says only that you can possibly recover scattered fragments
from say 5% of the animal's DNA? But, its **still** way more than
thought possible, and enough to make "some" comparisons. The question
comes down to, if 5% survived, is that the only 5% that "could", and if
not, could other 5% amounts survive in other samples, eventually
resulting in a 70-80% recovery, or some such. An amount that "may" be
sufficient to reconstitute the original pattern (or close enough).
--
void main () {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> All of which says only that you can possibly recover scattered fragments
> from say 5% of the animal's DNA? But, its **still** way more than
> thought possible, and enough to make "some" comparisons.
Plus, you have millions of copies of the DNA, and you can take
independent pieces of it and put them in the right order. Like having
100 copies of a book, each with pages missing, and putting together one
good copy.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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>> All of which says only that you can possibly recover scattered
>> fragments from say 5% of the animal's DNA? But, its **still** way more
>> than thought possible, and enough to make "some" comparisons.
>
> Plus, you have millions of copies of the DNA, and you can take
> independent pieces of it and put them in the right order. Like having
> 100 copies of a book, each with pages missing, and putting together one
> good copy.
I'm sorry - I thought foscils were "rare"? ;-)
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Invisible wrote:
> I'm sorry - I thought foscils were "rare"? ;-)
It doesn't take a whole lot of fossil to have a million cells in it.
"Humans have an estimated 100 trillion or 10^14 cells; a typical cell
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> I'm sorry - I thought foscils were "rare"? ;-)
>
> It doesn't take a whole lot of fossil to have a million cells in it.
No - but you do need to find a rare cell that hasn't been completely
mineralised... ;-)
(I would anticipate that sorting out cells from different species would
be hard too.)
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Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> wrote:
> I'm sorry - I thought foscils were "rare"? ;-)
You keep using that word...
--
- Warp
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