For the first article of this science blog, I thought I would go back to beginning of my interest in science: Jurassic Park. Awesome book. Awesome movie. Awesome soundtrack. In fact, I’m currently listening to the soundtrack by John Williams as I write this. I can even faintly remember my 5th grade crush and I talking about it because she was also reading it for a book report.

Other than the foundation for my 5th grade love affair, Jurassic Park was and still is a fascinating science fiction book. Dinosaurs are very much part of our culture and they capture the imaginations of children and adults worldwide (like myself, in case if you haven’t figured that out).

So, is Jurassic Park possible? In theory, cloning an dinosaur is possible, but in practice it’s next to impossible with today’s technology and understanding of dinosaur embryology. When researching this article, I naturally hit up Wikipedia and sure enough, I found an article called “Biological issues in Jurassic Park” [2] A good portion of this article talks about idea of extracting dinosaur DNA (for more info DNA, see the Wikipedia entry) from mosquitoes fossilized in amber. The theory behind this concept of Jurassic Park was first discussed by George O. Poinar in the 1980s and involved the theory that a 65 to 230 million year old mosquito bit a dinosaur, ingested the blood cells, and ended up embedded in amber which is fossilized tree sap. [1 & 2] A very clever idea and it sounds good on paper and ancient DNA has been extracted this way. [3] However, no dinosaur DNA has been found using this method.

Even if an amber miner were to hit the jackpot, the quality of DNA yielded wouldn’t be sufficient to grow a dinosaur. The book acknowledged this fact and talked about how frog DNA was used to fill the gaps in the genetic code. Once again, this sounds good on paper but knowing how merge two species of DNA is next to impossible without knowing the original dinosaur DNA sequence. While dinosaur and frog DNA are relatively similar, slight differences in crucial genes like homeobox genes that regulate which parts of DNA are activated for a specific task (they essentially tell a developing dinosaur grow a leg here and here, etc.) would be gigantic hurdle to hatching a healthy infant dinosaur.

However, the bar was lowered a great deal with the publication of a March 2005 article in the journal Science. To the great astonishment of all, actual soft tissue of a Tyrannosaurus rex was found deep inside the thigh bone! This was a huge breakthrough because it was always assumed there was no way dinosaur soft tissue could escape the process of fossilization after 65 million years. Using a new technique to remove mineralized bone, researchers led by Mary H. Schweitzer of North Carolina State University discovered blood vessels, bones cells, and even blood cells with possible intact nuclei! (nuclei or nucleus are the portion of cells that holds DNA) While it highlly doubtful they will find the entire T.Rex genome (the term that describes the entire DNA sequence of an organism), the chances of finding valuable DNA fragments are “promising”. This process of DNA extraction will be long and difficult (story is almost 2 years old and I haven’t heard anything), but I will keep my ear to ground and do some more through searching for new developments. Even if this particular thigh bone doesn’t yield anything, this development means other bones will contain soft tissue. This particular T. Rex skeleton was well-preserved….that means they are other dinosaur skeletons that are even more preserved yet to be found, so and so forth. [4]

If finding the complete T. Rex genome wasn’t hard enough, the next step would present challenges that science can’t just handle at this moment. All embryos need extra hormones at precise levels and times to grow properly. It’s doubtful that the pregnancy hormones of currently living relatives like birds and crocodiles would be able to recognize the dinosaur DNA and act upon a dinosaur embryo, so the most likely route would be a synthetic egg. This technology currently exists, but the hormones would have to devised from the dinosaur genome. Without an real-life dinosaur mother and egg to study, this will be a daunting task and will require much experimenting with dinosaur DNA (once a complete genome is sequenced, of course).

In summary, from all the reading I did on this subject I think that one day in the very distant future something like Jurassic Park could be possible. When I say the very distant future, I’m talking like 500 years from now when we have hopefully figured out how to sustain food, water, energy, and first-rate medical care for all of humanity while sustaining a balance with the environment. After all, as little-kid-on-Christmas-morning exciting going to the real Jurassic Park would be, we have more important challenges to solve for now before the scientific community puts more weight behind this kind of research.

Stay tuned for more updates on this story and dinosaurs in general.

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Posted by Tim Roth, author of the political blog Think Anew and Act Anew

Sources:
1. “Biological issues in Jurassic Park”, Wikipedia entry
2. “Dinosaur DNA”
3. Cano RJ, Poinar H, Poinar Jr GO. 1992a. Isolation and partial characterisation of DNA from the bee Problebeia dominicana (Apidae:Hymenoptera) in 25-40 million year old amber. Med Sci Res 20:249-251
4. “Soft Tissues Recovered from Ancient Dinosaur” by Christopher Joyce, NPR broadcast