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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

THIRD STEP FOR PIGEON "They will replace chunks of band-tailed-pigeon DNA with synthesized chunks of passenger-pigeon DNA, until the cell’s genome matches their working passenger-pigeon genome" using Church's "MAGE ... “evolution machine” ... introduce ... millions of years of genetic mutations within minutes." http://lnkd.in/bTtn5st View in LinkedIn

PIGEON SECOND STEP. "Next the genome will have to be inscribed into a living cell. This is even more complicated than it sounds. Molecular biologists will begin by trying to culture germ cells from a band-tailed pigeon. Bird cells can be especially difficult to culture." http://lnkd.in/bTtn5st View in LinkedIn

FIRST STEP IN REVIVAL OF PASSENGER PIGEON. "The first step is to reconstruct the species’ genome. By comparing the fragments of passenger-pigeon DNA with the genomes of similar species, researchers can assemble an approximation of an actual passenger-pigeon genome." http://lnkd.in/bTtn5st View in LinkedIn

PASSENGER PIGEON REVIVAL, is a case study of a particularly ambitious and complex procedure, with no guarantees of success, since the entire process has never been done before, only parts along the way. Bird revival has special challenges because of the nature of eggs. A stepwise review of the plan. View in LinkedIn