cloning of extinct species

[The Wrath]

Will this ever be done? There are obviously safety concerns with many extinct animals (i.e. dinosaurs), but I really hope I live to see the day when saber-toothed tigers are cloned. And think how much we could learn about our evolutionary history if we managed to clone our ancestors.

[John McVey]

Will this ever be done?

If it can be then you can be certain that someone somewhere will make sure it will be. I think Sophia or Liriodendron could tell you more (I'm just a lab tech who kills critters to analyse their precious bodily fluids).

There are obviously safety concerns with many extinct animals (i.e. dinosaurs)

I'd be more worried about critters on the other end of the scale, such as diseases that no genomes of creatures around today have seen for aeons and likely have their biochemical warfare defence mechanisms turned off for (if they haven't atrophied away completely).

but I really hope I live to see the day when saber-toothed tigers are cloned.

To what end?

More likely first candidates that size are creatures like thylacines (Tasmanian tigers), which are then released into the wild, partly because the intact genome would be easier to get but also because their habitat is still in the same shape. Take this mentality to its logical conclusion and you get that in the wrong hands the technology would be an econut's fantasy, all the way up to Twelve Monkeys, as per evil SOB's actually hoping for viruses to wipe out mankind. Another evil use would be by fruitcake groups conducting biological warfare for racist or other ideological grounds.

In the right hands it could be means for brewing up old bugs and the like to see what useful biochemicals we could get from them, and cure an immense variety of ailments. As it happens, I saw today a program on new plans to harvest Australian sponges because they are homes to a staggering number of previously unknown bacteria species that are in a useful-chemical-producing genus (streptomyces). Cloning would make it easier to produce them en masse instead of the unwieldy sponge farms that are being tried off the coast of Queensland at the moment.

The technology would also be a stepping stone not to cloning but of making new species in the lab. Ditto x 1000 on the potential what-end hopes and fears.

And think how much we could learn about our evolutionary history if we managed to clone our ancestors.

Having around creatures - people - that aren't human and yet on the borderline of possessing individual rights would be a moral and legal nightmare. I advise against performing that particular cloning experiment.

JJM