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ALL LIVING THINGS ARE MOSAICS OF DNA from bacteria and viruses, with the famous transposons or jumping genes, quite apart from mixing gene pools by breeding. It is archaic to be purist about the genetic purity of any creature on this planet, synthetic or natural. View in LinkedIn

CHURCH BRAND REVIVALISTS. "Writer and environmentalist Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, and his wife Ryan Phelan, founder of the genetics company DNA Direct ... Working with Harvard biologist George Church, they figured out a possible way to revive passenger pigeons." These birds once were bountiful in the US." http://lnkd.in/bfZ5a84 View in LinkedIn

HYBRIDS ARE THE FUTURE. "Idealizing genetic purity of species is a purely human construction, ignoring the fact that even we are not pure, bearing evidence in our DNA of breeding with Neanderthals, Denisovans ... Is a bison that bears cattle DNA in the American West any less of a bison? The future belongs to such hybrids." http://lnkd.in/dYTym8q View in LinkedIn

"DE-EXTINCTION is not just about reversing extinction ... but about helping to prevent extinction. It “could help revolutionize conservation,” ...'That’s because de-extinction can be used to combat what’s called the “extinction vortex” ... animal populations fall, inbreeding ... and species go extinct by loss of genetic variation." http://lnkd.in/b_VedHC View in LinkedIn

NATURE VS NURTURE. "Baby birds learn a lot from older birds, and the band-tailed pigeon ... is very different from the passenger pigeon ... even if a genetic replica of a passenger pigeon could be created (a very big if), the best ... is a bird that’s something like a passenger pigeon and something like a band-tailed pigeon—a Band-Aid pigeon." http://lnkd.in/dAi8nHt View in LinkedIn

ALTERNATIVE: OLD MCDONALD'S FARM. "We don’t have the technology to bring extinct birds back to life" ... A mammal’s egg is accessible to be adjusted when it is still a single cell, but you can’t do that with a bird egg ... found a way to adjust whole gonads ... put chicken cells into a duck that then mated with a hen and produced viable chicks." http://lnkd.in/dYTym8q View in LinkedIn

2060: PASSENGER PIGEON PROJECT GOAL. "The project will be considered a full success when the population in the wild is capable of perpetuating itself without the addition of new pigeons from the aviary. Novak expects this to occur as early as 25 years after the first birds are let into the wild, or 2060." http://lnkd.in/bTtn5st View in LinkedIn

LAST STEP, the pigeon "Chimeras would be bred with one another in an effort to produce passenger pigeons. As unlikely as this sounds, there is a strong precedent; surrogate species have been used extensively in pigeon breeding." http://lnkd.in/bTtn5st View in LinkedIn

PENULTIMATE STEP. "The genetically engineered germ cells integrate into the embryo; into its gonads ... When the chick hatches, it should look and act like a band-tailed pigeon ... If it is a male, it carries passenger-pigeon sperm; if it is a female, its eggs are passenger-pigeon eggs." http://lnkd.in/bTtn5st View in LinkedIn

FOURTH STEP. "The biologists would next introduce these living cells into a band-tailed-pigeon embryo. No hocus-pocus is involved here: You chop off the top of a pigeon egg, inject the passenger-pigeon cells inside and cover the hole with a material that looks like Saran wrap." http://lnkd.in/bTtn5st View in LinkedIn