WEBVTT - Back to Life, Back to Reality 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.240 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.400 --> 0:00:15.000 Forward Thinking. Hey everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the 0:00:15.080 --> 0:00:17.360 podcast that looks at the future and says from my 0:00:17.440 --> 0:00:20.640 heart and from my hand, why don't people understand my intention? 0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:25.680 I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Volcaba, and I'm Joe McCormick. So, guys, 0:00:25.680 --> 0:00:27.840 have you have you ever watched? Uh it's a little 0:00:27.880 --> 0:00:33.639 known documentary film called Jurassic Park. I only saw Jurassic 0:00:33.720 --> 0:00:38.239 Park three, but it was fantastic. Uh No, I saw 0:00:38.360 --> 0:00:40.600 Jurassic Park in the theater when I was a kid, 0:00:40.640 --> 0:00:43.720 and it blew my mind. I probably I got the 0:00:43.800 --> 0:00:46.040 VHS tape when it came out and I watched it 0:00:46.200 --> 0:00:49.800 until the tape was no more right. I mean, it 0:00:49.880 --> 0:00:52.360 was certainly one of those that sparked people's imaginations. For 0:00:52.440 --> 0:00:54.680 one thing, of course, it was a great example of 0:00:55.280 --> 0:00:58.000 c g I in an era when before that you 0:00:58.040 --> 0:01:01.720 didn't really see it at that level of sophistication. It 0:01:01.800 --> 0:01:05.800 was for the time, really believable effects. Oh yeah, people 0:01:05.840 --> 0:01:07.520 love c G I in the nineties, but if you 0:01:07.560 --> 0:01:10.040 go back and watch most of those nineties movies now 0:01:10.120 --> 0:01:14.120 they look awful. Yeah, they definitely Yeah, well it's you know, 0:01:14.200 --> 0:01:15.800 in Jurassic Park was one of the ones that really 0:01:15.800 --> 0:01:20.720 incorporated puppets and also practical and cg those a good choice. 0:01:21.000 --> 0:01:24.240 How things held up yep, yep. And so here's the thing, guys, 0:01:24.400 --> 0:01:28.160 um you know, it kind of popularized this idea of 0:01:28.319 --> 0:01:31.920 what if we could get some sort of genetic material 0:01:32.040 --> 0:01:36.280 from long extinct species and then through some sort of 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:40.880 science application, bring those extinct species back to life all 0:01:40.880 --> 0:01:43.880 odd Jurassic Park. You notice in Jurassic Park when they're 0:01:43.880 --> 0:01:46.080 taking them through the lab, they kind of skipped through 0:01:46.120 --> 0:01:48.640 all the hard parts. Well, I love that the science 0:01:48.640 --> 0:01:51.400 is all delivered by a cartoon character that is dumbing 0:01:51.400 --> 0:01:54.400 everything down for the lowest common denominator. And part of 0:01:54.440 --> 0:01:56.240 that is so that the writers don't have to go 0:01:56.360 --> 0:01:59.160 to the trouble of actually explaining how it works or 0:01:59.200 --> 0:02:02.200 how it would work if it could work right. Well, 0:02:02.280 --> 0:02:04.440 the book To Be Fair went a little bit more 0:02:04.480 --> 0:02:06.960 into that, but it's still absolutely a work of fiction. 0:02:07.000 --> 0:02:09.720 And even though Michael Crichton has has this cute tendency 0:02:09.800 --> 0:02:13.400 of footnoting his fictional works, that doesn't mean that those 0:02:13.440 --> 0:02:16.919 footnotes are based on whoa whoa whoa work of fiction. Now, 0:02:17.080 --> 0:02:21.200 I thought we had already cloned a few dinosaurs. Is 0:02:21.240 --> 0:02:24.880 that not true? We we don't have resurrected raptors and 0:02:24.960 --> 0:02:28.799 t rex is somewhere in Texas only in my heart, Yeah, 0:02:28.919 --> 0:02:32.920 sadly no. So the reason why this this is part 0:02:32.919 --> 0:02:35.560 of our discussion today is because in the news recently 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:39.040 there have been some articles about de extinction and we 0:02:39.080 --> 0:02:41.800 wanted to talk about what the extinction is and UH 0:02:41.840 --> 0:02:44.160 and what its applications could be and why there is 0:02:44.280 --> 0:02:48.600 controversy around it. But to start off kind of helps 0:02:48.680 --> 0:02:51.840 lay the groundwork if we actually talk about just the 0:02:51.880 --> 0:02:55.880 whole problem of extinction in the first place. So, first, 0:02:56.120 --> 0:02:59.919 how many species go extinct every year? I don't know 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:03.000 how you could even guess? Yeah, yeah, it turns out 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:05.600 that that that's very difficult. You can really just estimate. 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:08.200 For one thing, we don't even know how many species 0:03:08.240 --> 0:03:11.680 there are, do we absolutely not. We are still discovering 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:16.680 some like fifteen thousand species every year, and UH researchers 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:19.200 think that that of the one point to million that 0:03:19.200 --> 0:03:22.200 we've already documented on on this our wonderful planet Earth, 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:25.560 that might be a part of some eight point seven 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:29.399 million that are kicking around. Wow. So yeah, we still 0:03:29.400 --> 0:03:32.240 have quite a bit of quite a few more species 0:03:32.280 --> 0:03:34.720 to discover before we get close to it. We're like 0:03:34.800 --> 0:03:37.120 not even a quarter of the way there. Yeah. Yeah, 0:03:37.120 --> 0:03:39.160 there might be some some eight percent of life on 0:03:39.200 --> 0:03:41.960 Earth that is yet undiscovered. Um. But but here's the thing. 0:03:41.960 --> 0:03:44.080 A lot of the ones that we're currently discovering are 0:03:44.120 --> 0:03:48.160 already endangered. Yeah. So they're already you know, the populations 0:03:48.160 --> 0:03:53.000 already so small that that the smallest of of influences 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:55.880 could make these populations go extinct. Things could be going 0:03:55.920 --> 0:03:59.200 extinct before we have even documented them. And it's worth 0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:02.520 pointing out that things go extinct naturally. I mean that 0:04:02.640 --> 0:04:06.560 happens all the time, and not just when meteors hit either, right, No, 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:09.400 I mean just due to the pressures of nature, you know, 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:13.600 food supply and predation. Things go out of business, sometimes 0:04:13.600 --> 0:04:17.440 a species is gone. But also we drive things to 0:04:17.560 --> 0:04:21.280 extinction knowing yes, there's a there's natural background extinction, which 0:04:21.360 --> 0:04:23.720 is what the rate of extinction would be if humans 0:04:23.720 --> 0:04:26.599 were not part of the picture, and it is significantly 0:04:26.640 --> 0:04:30.760 lower than once you factor humans in. How significantly well 0:04:30.880 --> 0:04:34.679 scientists estimate that the extincion extinction rate is one thousand 0:04:34.720 --> 0:04:38.800 to ten thousand times greater than that background extinction rate 0:04:38.839 --> 0:04:42.880 according to the World Wildlife Fund. So that's one thousand 0:04:42.960 --> 0:04:46.960 to ten thousand times. I mean, that's human influence right there. 0:04:47.960 --> 0:04:50.919 On top of that. That means that anywhere between point 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:54.080 zero one and point one percent of all species go 0:04:54.200 --> 0:04:56.880 extinct every year. And again the reason why I point 0:04:56.920 --> 0:04:59.160 zero one to point one is because we don't know 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:02.080 how many species there are, nor can we really get 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:04.960 an estimate on exactly how many are going extinct every year. 0:05:05.160 --> 0:05:07.680 So these are all you know, based on on like 0:05:07.839 --> 0:05:10.240 wide ranges and guesses and if you want to know 0:05:10.279 --> 0:05:13.480 how wide, well, the estimation on how many species are 0:05:13.560 --> 0:05:18.360 out there, uh, and the extinction rates taken into as 0:05:18.360 --> 0:05:22.080 a combination mean that something between two hundred and one 0:05:22.200 --> 0:05:27.320 hundred thousand species are going extinct every year. So on 0:05:27.360 --> 0:05:30.320 the low end, two hundred species not great, but you know, 0:05:30.800 --> 0:05:33.400 not a hundred thousand. But again, all of this is 0:05:33.440 --> 0:05:35.880 just based on those those crazy estimations of how many 0:05:35.920 --> 0:05:37.800 species are out there and how many are actually dying 0:05:37.800 --> 0:05:39.560 out right. And I do want to put in that 0:05:39.640 --> 0:05:42.560 not all of these species are like adorable monkeys. Um, 0:05:42.839 --> 0:05:45.400 there's a lot of bacteria and stuff like that involved 0:05:45.400 --> 0:05:48.599 in these calculations, right. Uh. And some of them, however, 0:05:48.680 --> 0:05:51.840 are totally adorable. Some of them are adorable monkeys or 0:05:51.920 --> 0:05:56.200 or some other you know, equally adorable animal. And according 0:05:56.279 --> 0:05:59.160 to the i u c N Red List criteria, there 0:05:59.160 --> 0:06:03.919 are sixteen thousand, ninety eight species on the endangered list, 0:06:04.560 --> 0:06:07.640 and the same list identify as nine hundred five species 0:06:07.680 --> 0:06:10.359 that are now extinct in the wild, now extinct, like 0:06:10.440 --> 0:06:14.240 since the beginning of this classification. Yeah, essentially they're identifying 0:06:14.279 --> 0:06:18.560 species some of these there are still examples of those species, 0:06:18.600 --> 0:06:21.160 but they are all in captivity. None of them are 0:06:21.160 --> 0:06:22.760 in the y I see what you mean, Like in 0:06:22.880 --> 0:06:25.599 zoos exactly, you won't. You won't find them in their 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:28.320 home ecosystems anymore, at least none have been spotted for 0:06:28.360 --> 0:06:31.040 at least a few decades. Uh. And in fact, that's 0:06:31.040 --> 0:06:33.440 one of the problems with listing animals as extinct. You know, 0:06:33.480 --> 0:06:35.880 it's all based upon our observations. It's not like we 0:06:35.960 --> 0:06:38.520 have a little light on a giant switchboard and when 0:06:38.520 --> 0:06:40.799 the light goes out, you know that that species has gone. 0:06:41.160 --> 0:06:43.640 So it's a little complicated. Okay, So now that we 0:06:43.680 --> 0:06:47.080 can see how fast the problem is getting worse that 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:51.640 we're we're changing ecosystems constantly by knocking species out of business. 0:06:52.440 --> 0:06:56.520 This can't be a great idea to just drive species 0:06:56.560 --> 0:07:02.080 to extinction with no forethought. Is it possible to reverse 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:07.080 the polarity? Um? Okay, so we're going star trek on this. Okay, Uh, 0:07:07.160 --> 0:07:11.840 technically it's it depends. It depends upon the species and 0:07:11.920 --> 0:07:15.040 how long it's been extinct. So for example, Jurassic Park, 0:07:15.360 --> 0:07:18.200 that's the example with all the dinosaurs coming back. Is 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:21.640 that realistic? As it turns out, it is not. And 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:25.800 the reason for that is because DNA degrades over time. 0:07:26.040 --> 0:07:29.600 It does not remain completely pristine. Even if you were 0:07:29.640 --> 0:07:33.120 to find a mosquito buried in amber that had dinosaur 0:07:33.160 --> 0:07:36.400 blood in it, that DNA will degrade within the little 0:07:36.680 --> 0:07:39.320 gut of that mosquito. So it's not like you're going 0:07:39.360 --> 0:07:42.680 to suddenly have a perfect strand of DNA where you 0:07:42.680 --> 0:07:46.200 can sequence a dinosaurs genome. It's just not going to happen. Well, 0:07:46.240 --> 0:07:48.040 you're not even going to get like a few little 0:07:48.120 --> 0:07:50.920 strands like I don't know, give me some numbers here. 0:07:51.400 --> 0:07:53.480 The thing is is that DNA is is only really 0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:56.080 readable for about a million years. It's it's got a 0:07:56.080 --> 0:07:58.840 half life of five and twenty one years, which means 0:07:58.880 --> 0:08:01.800 that that how of the nucleu tide bonds and it 0:08:01.840 --> 0:08:05.760 will break down every one years, right, um, Which means 0:08:05.760 --> 0:08:09.120 that basically anything over a million years old is effectively gibberish, 0:08:09.120 --> 0:08:13.120 and anything over some six point eight million is effectively destroyed. Um, 0:08:13.160 --> 0:08:15.720 which is pretty impressive for for DNA. That's a lot 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:18.560 longer than we actually thought originally that it was going 0:08:18.600 --> 0:08:20.960 to last. But the thing is that the dinosaur extinction 0:08:21.000 --> 0:08:25.320 event happened some sixty three million years ago. Um. The 0:08:25.320 --> 0:08:27.600 the oldest sample of DNA have read about being used 0:08:27.600 --> 0:08:32.800 to create a successful clone was only frozen for sixteen years. Yeah. Okay, 0:08:32.880 --> 0:08:36.360 so but here's a question I always had about Jurassic Park, 0:08:36.440 --> 0:08:39.080 which is, even if you could get that DNA, even 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:42.840 if what you're talking about didn't happen, how would you 0:08:42.920 --> 0:08:48.559 make it into an egg that hatches? Yeah, we'd have to. Um. 0:08:48.600 --> 0:08:50.560 I feel like they skipped over that part in the movie. 0:08:50.600 --> 0:08:54.680 I don't remember what they said. Well, they combined, they combined, 0:08:54.720 --> 0:08:57.319 they filled in gaps in the genome that they had, 0:08:57.360 --> 0:08:59.120 and we'll talk a little bit about filling in gaps, 0:08:59.120 --> 0:09:01.280 because that actually is something that people are trying to do. 0:09:01.320 --> 0:09:03.199 You know that they've filled it with the DNA of 0:09:03.240 --> 0:09:06.200 a frog. I guess the question is more like physical 0:09:06.240 --> 0:09:09.080 how they get it into an egg. They also they 0:09:09.120 --> 0:09:13.079 also used frog eggs, I believe, for for cloning purposes. 0:09:13.120 --> 0:09:15.400 The way that cloning works is usually you scoop the 0:09:15.480 --> 0:09:19.880 DNA out of existing cell nucleus and put new DNA 0:09:19.960 --> 0:09:22.000 material in there right right, and you and then you 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:25.480 hope it ends up forming an embryo. Yeah. The problem 0:09:25.559 --> 0:09:28.560 is that that egg cells contain mitochondria, which contain their 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:30.959 own little bits of DNA from the donor animal. And 0:09:31.160 --> 0:09:34.640 unlike in say Star Trek, when Klingons and humans which 0:09:35.040 --> 0:09:39.480 evolved on completely separate planets, can produce viable offspring, or 0:09:39.760 --> 0:09:42.720 even in Jurassic Park, where it just gave them plot 0:09:42.760 --> 0:09:46.920 dependent hero saving weaknesses. Um, really, it's it's more likely 0:09:46.960 --> 0:09:50.440 that these cells would just be be unviable. They would 0:09:50.440 --> 0:09:52.920 not be able to germinate, would not produce any kind 0:09:52.960 --> 0:09:55.800 of any kind of life. Yeah, and also I should 0:09:55.840 --> 0:09:58.400 point out that it wasn't just weaknesses. It also gave 0:09:58.440 --> 0:10:00.559 them their strength because that was what gave dinosaurs the 0:10:00.600 --> 0:10:04.440 ability to spontaneously switch sexes. So that allowed them to 0:10:04.440 --> 0:10:07.120 continue to have because they were supposed to all be female, 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:10.320 and then uh they a couple of them ended up 0:10:10.320 --> 0:10:12.559 being able because because the jenet material they had was 0:10:12.600 --> 0:10:17.920 taken from frogs that were able to change their genders. Basically, yeah, okay, 0:10:18.000 --> 0:10:22.160 so I guess we can't bring dinosaurs back. What can 0:10:22.280 --> 0:10:25.480 we do? Can we? Maybe we can't resurrect a t rex? 0:10:25.520 --> 0:10:29.560 Can we resurrect something like a mammoth? Actually, there are 0:10:29.559 --> 0:10:32.360 a lot of people working on exactly that. The wooly 0:10:32.400 --> 0:10:35.880 mammoth has become kind of the poster animal for a 0:10:35.920 --> 0:10:38.320 lot of different efforts. Not the only one, We've got, 0:10:38.320 --> 0:10:42.040 another one will chat about. Yeah, populations of William mammoth's 0:10:42.160 --> 0:10:46.120 were around as as early late as about ten thousand 0:10:46.200 --> 0:10:49.840 years ago, or possibly as recently as four thousand years ago. Yeah, 0:10:49.880 --> 0:10:54.960 so that's certainly a viable, a viable option. I most 0:10:54.960 --> 0:10:56.880 of the time I hear around ten thousand years is 0:10:56.920 --> 0:10:59.600 about what people expect to be able to bring back 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:02.560 from extinction. That's like a kind of a round figure 0:11:02.600 --> 0:11:06.679 that people throw around. But as for actual efforts, like 0:11:06.920 --> 0:11:10.720 real scientists doing real science trying to bring extinct animals back. 0:11:10.760 --> 0:11:13.760 We've got two examples we can talk about right now 0:11:13.800 --> 0:11:20.319 that we're semi successful. Uh, semi successful meaning that ultimately 0:11:20.360 --> 0:11:24.080 you didn't have an animal survive very long, but but 0:11:24.240 --> 0:11:28.680 there was development yet technically successful. So if you get 0:11:28.800 --> 0:11:32.880 sad about stories about furry animals not living very long, 0:11:33.360 --> 0:11:35.400 you may want to skip ahead a little bit because 0:11:35.400 --> 0:11:38.560 I'm gonna tell you about Celia. Lay it on me, 0:11:38.960 --> 0:11:42.959 all right. Ce Celia was the last known living brocado, 0:11:43.120 --> 0:11:45.400 which is a type of ibex and and for those 0:11:45.440 --> 0:11:49.480 of us who don't encounter ibex is very frequently, that's 0:11:49.520 --> 0:11:51.760 sort of kind of like a goat like animals, the 0:11:51.760 --> 0:11:54.840 ones that have the really long round horns and like 0:11:54.880 --> 0:12:01.040 they loop back. Well, the bricado was one population, one 0:12:01.440 --> 0:12:06.280 one species, so it uh had dwindled until they really 0:12:06.360 --> 0:12:09.480 only thought there was this one living brocado left, and 0:12:09.480 --> 0:12:12.520 they named her Celia, fitted her with a collar, kept 0:12:12.520 --> 0:12:16.199 her in the wild. The collar monitored Celia's life signs, 0:12:16.520 --> 0:12:19.600 and then one day the collar essentially indicated that Celia's 0:12:19.640 --> 0:12:22.839 heart had stopped beating. A team went out to find 0:12:22.840 --> 0:12:25.560 out what had happened. And discovered that Celia had been 0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:28.280 crushed to death by the limb of a falling tree. 0:12:28.800 --> 0:12:32.959 They they managed to harvest them cells from celia and 0:12:33.040 --> 0:12:37.200 they froze them, they preserved them, and then years later 0:12:37.280 --> 0:12:41.000 another team researchers and scientists decided to try and bring 0:12:41.040 --> 0:12:43.960 the brocado back. It was only about three years later, 0:12:44.000 --> 0:12:45.920 so this was so the cells had not been in 0:12:45.960 --> 0:12:49.600 cold storage for very long. Yeah, they ended up harvesting 0:12:49.600 --> 0:12:52.920 the nuclei from those cells, and then they used emptied 0:12:53.080 --> 0:12:57.760 goat eggs cells and injected the nuclei from the brocado 0:12:57.840 --> 0:13:01.160 into the goat egg cells and then landed those into 0:13:01.200 --> 0:13:05.600 surrogate mothers. And they did fifties seven attempts. Only seven 0:13:05.640 --> 0:13:08.480 of those resulted in pregnancy, and six of those ended 0:13:08.520 --> 0:13:14.520 a miscarriage. However, that that last example was actually brought 0:13:14.600 --> 0:13:16.520 all the way up to where you had a baby 0:13:16.559 --> 0:13:20.680 brocado delivered by c section um. The baby brocado or 0:13:20.720 --> 0:13:24.280 the kid, unfortunately didn't have its lungs developed properly. One 0:13:24.280 --> 0:13:27.680 of its lungs actually formed essentially like a solid mass 0:13:27.720 --> 0:13:30.160 of tissue kind of like they described it being more 0:13:30.200 --> 0:13:34.040 like a liver. That good breeding. Yeah, and it. It 0:13:34.400 --> 0:13:37.719 essentially suffocated to death shortly after it was born, so 0:13:37.760 --> 0:13:40.400 it only it only survived a couple of minutes. So 0:13:40.440 --> 0:13:43.400 that's very sad. But it did lay the groundwork and 0:13:43.400 --> 0:13:47.600 foundation for a lot of other UH groups to kind 0:13:47.600 --> 0:13:50.160 of make this attempt. This was back in in two 0:13:50.240 --> 0:13:53.079 thousand three, so this was you know, you know, more 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:56.160 than a decade ago. Now there's another project called the 0:13:56.240 --> 0:14:01.000 Lazarus Project, which UM is the University of new Castle, Australia, 0:14:01.280 --> 0:14:03.480 and they decided to go with a totally different kind 0:14:03.480 --> 0:14:07.480 of cute cuddly animal, a frog. It gives birth by 0:14:07.600 --> 0:14:11.880 regurgitating its babies. Yeah, it's a it's a frog that 0:14:11.880 --> 0:14:15.880 gives birth through its mouth, essentially regurgitates its babies. But 0:14:15.920 --> 0:14:19.360 if you kiss it, it regurgitates the prince. No, it 0:14:19.360 --> 0:14:23.480 actually regurgitates prints and he'll sing purple rain. It turns 0:14:23.520 --> 0:14:27.440 into a prince that regurgitates frogs. I think we might 0:14:27.480 --> 0:14:30.480 be getting off track. What actually happens is the way 0:14:30.520 --> 0:14:34.160 this frog reproduces. It lays eggs, The eggs are fertilized, 0:14:34.200 --> 0:14:38.000 and then the frog swallows the eggs to protect them, 0:14:38.120 --> 0:14:41.880 and then once the eggs hatch, it pukes up the babies. 0:14:42.360 --> 0:14:46.760 So this particular frog though, had gone extinct. Joe, this 0:14:46.840 --> 0:14:49.480 is no laughing matter. This is this is I'm just 0:14:49.520 --> 0:14:53.200 protecting them from Well, sure, when you put it like that, 0:14:53.240 --> 0:14:55.600 it sounds like it's you know, obscene, but no, it's 0:14:55.640 --> 0:15:00.680 it's really how these animals, how these animals survive. And um, 0:15:00.720 --> 0:15:05.240 this particular animal that the rio back trachius silas frog 0:15:06.120 --> 0:15:10.280 has gone when extinct back in the you know, nineteen seventies, 0:15:10.840 --> 0:15:13.520 but some of its cells had been in deep freeze, 0:15:13.520 --> 0:15:17.840 in a regular freezer actually since the nineteen seventies. And 0:15:17.880 --> 0:15:21.480 so the Lazarus Project harvested the nuclei and then they 0:15:21.480 --> 0:15:24.840 put them into emptied frog cells from great barred frogs, 0:15:25.120 --> 0:15:28.320 which are a fairly close relative to the frog that 0:15:28.360 --> 0:15:31.920 had gun extinct. So some of the cells began to 0:15:32.000 --> 0:15:34.280 divide and go right into the embryo stage, but none 0:15:34.320 --> 0:15:37.000 of the embryos survived past a few days. So again 0:15:37.080 --> 0:15:40.520 sort of promising results but not not a full success. 0:15:41.920 --> 0:15:45.520 Then you have another group called Revive and restore. This 0:15:45.600 --> 0:15:48.280 is one that I thought was really interesting. There are 0:15:48.280 --> 0:15:54.479 several articles that published in early fourteen about their particular 0:15:54.680 --> 0:15:59.000 drive to de extinction technologies. And their approach is a 0:15:59.000 --> 0:16:01.720 little different from, um, what we've been talking about. They're 0:16:01.760 --> 0:16:05.560 looking at creating a chimera, which is not, uh, the 0:16:05.600 --> 0:16:08.960 mythological creature that you know, you may be familiar with, 0:16:08.960 --> 0:16:10.960 particularly if you played a lot of dudgeons and dragons. 0:16:10.840 --> 0:16:16.320 And although that would be cool, can can we de extinctify? Well, 0:16:16.360 --> 0:16:18.160 we gotta, we gotta wait till the end of the 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:21.440 podcast before we talk about that, but we we will 0:16:21.480 --> 0:16:25.320 address that, yes, um, but yes, Reviving Restore was looking 0:16:25.440 --> 0:16:29.920 at creating this These these animals that outwardly resemble one species, 0:16:30.280 --> 0:16:33.600 but internally have some elements of a different species, So 0:16:33.640 --> 0:16:37.040 they are a chimera of two different species. And the 0:16:37.080 --> 0:16:40.200 example that was used in all the articles because one 0:16:40.240 --> 0:16:43.480 of the people involved in Reviving Restore is so passionate 0:16:43.520 --> 0:16:46.880 about this particular species, is the passenger pigeon. Now, I 0:16:47.320 --> 0:16:49.360 don't know how much you guys know about passenger pigeons. 0:16:49.360 --> 0:16:53.800 At one time it was the dominant species of birds 0:16:53.960 --> 0:16:56.680 in the United States. There were something like five billion 0:16:56.800 --> 0:16:59.520 of them. I've I've read reports of like the flocks 0:16:59.560 --> 0:17:02.200 of them blotting out the sun. Yeah, they made up 0:17:02.280 --> 0:17:06.359 sixty percent of all birds in the us. So to 0:17:06.480 --> 0:17:09.680 think that we went from a population that enormous too 0:17:09.800 --> 0:17:12.600 completely extinct in just a couple of decades due to 0:17:12.760 --> 0:17:16.560 hunting and and other problems as well, it is pretty 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:18.960 eye opening to think that, you know, essentially that's saying like, 0:17:19.000 --> 0:17:21.919 no species is safe. If you think of something that 0:17:21.960 --> 0:17:24.840 looks that plentiful and yet could go extinct that quickly, 0:17:25.200 --> 0:17:27.800 it's a real eye opener. Well, the idea behind the 0:17:27.800 --> 0:17:32.399 passenger pigeon approach is to uh sequence the passenger pigeon 0:17:32.760 --> 0:17:37.159 genome by harvesting cells from various museum exhibits that have 0:17:37.359 --> 0:17:41.280 passenger pigeons, like no stuffed on display, to take some 0:17:41.359 --> 0:17:43.720 cells from that and to try and sequence the genome. 0:17:44.320 --> 0:17:47.240 And there's gaps in that genome, kind of like in 0:17:47.359 --> 0:17:49.919 Jurassic Park, and so to fill in those gaps, they 0:17:49.960 --> 0:17:52.159 start looking at some of the closest relatives to the 0:17:52.200 --> 0:17:55.720 passenger pigeon and trying to kind of, you know, fudge 0:17:55.720 --> 0:17:58.320 it a little bit, fill it in. Yeah, the modern 0:17:58.480 --> 0:18:01.440 band tailed pigeon, I think is one of the closest, 0:18:01.520 --> 0:18:03.960 and the idea is to get to a point where 0:18:04.000 --> 0:18:06.480 they can sequence d n A so that they can 0:18:06.520 --> 0:18:10.959 inject it directly into an egg of a band tailed pigeon. 0:18:11.280 --> 0:18:14.120 They'd actually make a little hole in the egg, inject 0:18:14.200 --> 0:18:17.120 the DNA down into it, and then patch the hole 0:18:17.160 --> 0:18:20.439 with essentially what looks like saran wrap, and allow it 0:18:20.520 --> 0:18:24.480 to continue to develop until it hatches into a hatchling. Now, 0:18:24.480 --> 0:18:26.879 the hatchling is going to look and behave just like 0:18:26.920 --> 0:18:30.240 a band tailed pigeon. It is, to all outward appearances, 0:18:30.400 --> 0:18:34.760 a simple band tailed pigeon, but it's reproductive cells as 0:18:34.760 --> 0:18:38.600 in its egg or sperm cells will be passenger pigeon cells. 0:18:38.920 --> 0:18:41.080 So if you can take a male and female band 0:18:41.119 --> 0:18:43.400 tailed pigeon that's been altered in this way and breed 0:18:43.480 --> 0:18:46.919 them together, then in theory, you would get a passenger pigeon. 0:18:47.920 --> 0:18:52.919 Kind of cool, also weird, little terrifying, pretty cool. The 0:18:52.960 --> 0:18:55.520 weirdest part is our I don't know if it's the 0:18:55.520 --> 0:18:58.280 weirdest part, but a weird part is that they're not 0:18:58.320 --> 0:19:00.760 really sure how to teach the passenger pigeons how to 0:19:00.800 --> 0:19:03.600 be passenger pigeons, assuming that this works, because this is 0:19:03.640 --> 0:19:06.400 not this is not something that's happened yet. It's it's 0:19:06.440 --> 0:19:09.639 something that they hypothesize would be possible, but they haven't 0:19:09.680 --> 0:19:13.560 proved it yet. But the thing that they're wondering is, Okay, 0:19:13.840 --> 0:19:17.679 if it hatches into this passenger pigeon after you know 0:19:17.720 --> 0:19:23.280 it's it's two generations removed from when things, Um, will 0:19:23.359 --> 0:19:26.560 it behave like a band tailed pigeon or would some 0:19:26.800 --> 0:19:30.679 behaviors be innate pigeons. That would come down to the 0:19:30.760 --> 0:19:34.520 question of whether its behaviors are more learned or instinctual. Sure, 0:19:34.760 --> 0:19:37.160 and I'm I'm wondering in the case of pigeons, I mean, 0:19:37.160 --> 0:19:40.440 and no offense to to pigeon aficionados out there, but 0:19:40.440 --> 0:19:42.919 but exactly how big the differences and whether or not 0:19:43.119 --> 0:19:46.360 that's uh, whether or not that's the operative point when 0:19:46.400 --> 0:19:49.840 you're talking pigeons. I think the biggest difference is migratory 0:19:49.880 --> 0:19:54.800 patterns because the passenger pigeon wasn't very didn't migrate very much, 0:19:55.040 --> 0:19:57.880 and some of these other pigeons do. So it's one 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:00.800 of those things where you're not there. They're not sure 0:20:00.840 --> 0:20:03.360 if this is even possible. And if we do bring 0:20:03.400 --> 0:20:07.440 passenger pigeons back, will they behave the way passenger pigeons 0:20:07.440 --> 0:20:09.919 of old did or will they be some sort of 0:20:10.040 --> 0:20:14.200 new species that are very close to what passenger pigeons were, 0:20:14.560 --> 0:20:18.280 but behave in a different way, and honestly, people aren't sure. 0:20:18.400 --> 0:20:21.080 And those are important questions because that also puts an 0:20:21.080 --> 0:20:25.159 impact upon the ecosystem that the passenger pigeon encounters, like 0:20:25.720 --> 0:20:27.960 you have to remember, and that we're going to talk 0:20:28.000 --> 0:20:30.800 about this a lot in our next section, about the 0:20:30.800 --> 0:20:36.040 fact that the world is this really interconnected, complicated system, 0:20:36.119 --> 0:20:38.920 and just because you add one thing in one place 0:20:38.960 --> 0:20:41.680 doesn't mean it's not somehow going to affect something else 0:20:41.800 --> 0:20:44.840 really far away, just through uh this whole you know, 0:20:44.920 --> 0:20:48.960 kind of domino effect or chaos theory if you're a 0:20:49.000 --> 0:20:53.840 certain mathematician. So this brings us to this question of 0:20:54.200 --> 0:20:58.760 if let's assuming that these these different approaches bear fruit, 0:20:59.280 --> 0:21:02.560 that they are able to bring at least some types 0:21:02.680 --> 0:21:06.880 of extinct species back to life through one of these methods, 0:21:07.880 --> 0:21:11.720 what are some of the other ethical and practical considerations 0:21:11.720 --> 0:21:15.320 we have to make, uh with this technology in mind. 0:21:16.640 --> 0:21:19.800 One of the ones I've seen, though I take some 0:21:19.920 --> 0:21:23.680 issue with it, is this view that, well, it might 0:21:23.680 --> 0:21:26.639 be a zero sum game, you know, so that if 0:21:26.680 --> 0:21:32.240 we're putting money and effort and time and attention into 0:21:32.400 --> 0:21:36.520 bringing extinct species back from the dead. Are we going 0:21:36.560 --> 0:21:39.840 to be therefore losing all of those same types of 0:21:39.880 --> 0:21:45.080 investments that we should be putting into keeping endangered species alive? Well? Yeah, 0:21:45.160 --> 0:21:48.000 I mean, if it's the super flashy, sexy kind of 0:21:48.040 --> 0:21:52.719 technology where you could tell people, hey, the majestic wooly 0:21:52.760 --> 0:21:55.920 mammoth could stride across the plains again, I mean, people 0:21:55.920 --> 0:21:58.080 are going to get excited about that. But it's something 0:21:58.080 --> 0:22:00.720 that none of us have ever seen. Hares about pandas. 0:22:01.240 --> 0:22:05.240 Let's to be fair, even conservationists say, who cares about 0:22:05.280 --> 0:22:08.320 pandas because they claim, or at least the ones I 0:22:08.359 --> 0:22:12.080 read claim, are the panda. The panda thing is like 0:22:12.240 --> 0:22:16.120 pandas are plentiful compared to say, white rhinos, Well, who 0:22:16.160 --> 0:22:19.120 cares about white rhinos? Let's bring willy mammoth. See that 0:22:19.119 --> 0:22:21.479 that's the worry, right, And and like you said, it's 0:22:21.560 --> 0:22:24.840 kind of two pronged. It's worrying about taking attention away 0:22:24.840 --> 0:22:29.280 from conservation efforts and also and probably more importantly, money 0:22:29.440 --> 0:22:33.320 from conservation efforts. Yeah. So if that were really how 0:22:33.359 --> 0:22:37.119 it worked, Like in order to invest in bringing something 0:22:37.160 --> 0:22:41.080 back from extinction, you have to take money away from conservation, 0:22:41.760 --> 0:22:44.760 I would consider that a very legitimate complaint. I don't 0:22:44.800 --> 0:22:47.480 think it necessarily works that way, Like no, and I 0:22:47.520 --> 0:22:49.040 think that really, in fact, you're you're going to be 0:22:49.119 --> 0:22:51.800 drawing attention to the overall issue. And I mean I 0:22:51.840 --> 0:22:54.120 would imagine, well, I know that a lot of these 0:22:54.160 --> 0:22:58.159 projects specifically take conservation as one of their big concerns, 0:22:58.200 --> 0:23:02.200