On Friday, I was down in Washington to speak at (and mostly watch) TEDxExtinction, a day-long meeting dedicated to exploring the possibility (and advisability) of bringing extinct species back into existence. The meeting coincided with the publication my story in the new issue of National Geographic on the subject. I invited readers to ask questions raised by either the story or the meeting, and then on Monday, National Geographic hosted a tweet chat on Twitter, which became an hour-long rapid-fire volley. So I’m only now getting a chance to write this long-promised post. Here are some answers to a few of the questions posted on the Loom and on Twitter–first on the logistics of de-extinction, and then the ethics.
Author: Matt Kristoffersen
Advances in cloning, stem cell manipulations, and sequencing DNA raise a profound possibility: we might be able to bring some species back from extinction. That’s the subject of my cover story for the April issue of National Geographic, which comes out today, and which you can read here.
This morning I spoke on Morning Edition on National Public Radio. The interview will be archived here.
Later today, I will be giving an introductory talk to an all-day exploration of “De-Exinction” at a TEDx meeting at the National Geographic Society. The talks will come from a remarkable line-up of cloning experts, conservation biologists, bioethicists, artists, and others. You can watch the live stream here, and in a few weeks all the videos will be posted online.
This is a fascinatingly complex subject–there are all sorts of questions about how de-extinction would work and about whether it’s a good idea or not. I’d like to invite everyone to post any questions they have from the article or meeting in the comment thread for this post. When I get back home, I will answer as many questions as I can and publish them in a post on Monday
Originally published March 15, 2013. Copyright 2013 Carl Zimmer.
Pretty much all the life you can see without the help of a microscope–toadstools, poplars, shortstops–is multicellular. Life began as single-celled microbes over 3.5 billion years ago. But at least 25 times over the course of the history of this planet, microbes have come together to form multicellular collectives–otherwise known as bodies.
These transitions are particularly intriguing to evolutionary biologists, because the nature of evolution itself changed along the way. If you’re a microbe, natural selection favors mutations that affect your nature as a single cell. If you stumble across a way to feed on a new nutrient, your descendants may grow faster than the competition and come to dominate your population. Single-celled microbes can evolve to be altruistic–even to commit suicide for the good of their fellow microbe–but they only do so to help their single-celled relatives.
Earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control warned that we’re facing an onslaught of “nightmare bacteria”–a group of highly resistant, highly deadly microbes. Talk of the Nation, the National Public Radio Show, asked me to join them to talk about these bugs yesterday. You can listen to it here:
This is the sort of story that seems tailor-made for confusion, thanks to the squirrelly nature of microbiology. As my fellow guest on the show, NPR science correspondent Rob Stein, observed, we are not dealing with an out-of-control plague that will wipe out the planet. On the other hand, as I pointed out, these nightmare bacteria are killing people, and will probably kill more people in the future. I’m sure that listeners were left scratching their heads a bit. So I wanted to take a moment this snowy morning to explain the news at more length.
This is a story about the discovery of an organ that measures twelve feet long and four inches wide. You might well assume that this is old news. After all, how could something the size of a lamppost go unnoticed by anatomists? And yet, in fact, it’s only just come to light.
The discovery emerged out of a blood-drenched confusion. Alexander Werth, an anatomist, was standing on an ice sheet miles off the coast of Alaska’s North Slope. He was watching Inupiat whale hunters dismember bowhead whales they had caught in the Bering Sea. This government-sanctioned hunt is one of the best opportunities for whale anatomists to get hold of fresh tissue from the animals.