Hybrid park

[ostrich160]

I have a plan to make (in a humane, non-cruel way) a Jurassic park.
But with a difference. I don't want these to be dinosaurs, I want them
to be dinosaur hybrids. Check out this article-
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/life/genetic/real-jurassic-park.htm
It says that the chances of getting just the right dna for dinosaur is
1/100000000, but what if we didnt try to create perfect dinosaurs, but
instead grab some frog dna and a bit of sheep dna and put it in the
gaps from the amber and you have the hybrid DNA!
but then what, people have been saying 'put it in an egg'. Well, it
cant be that easy, get the dna and put it in and your creature will
grow. And anyway, what tools do you use to get it in, a syringe would
ruin the eggs.
So if you can answer my questions of what do you do exactly to the egg
and how do you implant the dna then we'll all be seeing a new breed of
Jurassic parks soon!
thank you
Tom

[Cathal Garvey]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AntennapediaI don't have much to add on the incredibly ambitious idea of engineering eggs with present technology, but it's worth noting that birds are the direct descendent of the dinosaurs. In many birds it's almost obvious once you realise this fact; look at the legs of ostriches or even chickens and recall what velociraptor legs were depicted to look like. In fact, for some birds if you replace the beak with a snout, and replace the wings with arms, you have a pretty good facsimile already of a dinosaur (considering that Dinosaurs are increasingly believed to have sported feathers of a sort anyway).

It's for this reason that the most likely way to make pseudo-dinosaurs is actually back-engineering birds into saurian forms, by replacing or tweaking the genes that lead to upper limb, beak and tail development with parallel genes from related but structurally different organisms, such as lizards. How much those genetic regions will have diverged will have a lot to say in how hard this is. The way that a body is patterned by DNA is pretty complicated, in a paradoxically simple way. Pretty few proteins seem to control the formation of the body, but they do it by forming interference patterns. Imagine throwing stones in a pond, and the patterns of complicated waves formed when the waves from each splash hit each other. Now imagine trying to form the shape of a dinosaur by precisely throwing about thirty or fifty small stones into the pond at precise places and intervals. That's sort of how things work genetically, so it's hard to predict what'll happen if you replace or tweak any given gene.

For more information on this, look up some of the body-patterning work done in drosophila: Although you'd think fruit flies are too far from birds and humans to have much relevance, it turns out that the proteins controlling their body plans are closely related to those in our own genomes, and most of what we now know about human body formation at a genetic level is derived from fly research. Of particular note, because it's freaky, is the mutation that makes the flies grow legs instead of antennae. 

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[Jack Shultz]

Here is some "Food" for thought. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjcUyhk7jT0

[ostrich160]

no, my idea was never to make dinosaurs, just use them as the base. I
am basically asking 2 questions. How can I get pieces of dna and glue
them together to make a new organism and how can I insert that into an
egg (I mean a physical chicken egg) and make the organism I have
designed grow inside that egg and hatch instead of a chicken coming
out and my created dna just randomly in there doing nothing?

On Feb 26, 10:25 am, Cathal Garvey <cathalgar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AntennapediaIdon't have much to add on the

> incredibly ambitious idea of engineering eggs with present technology, but
> it's worth noting that birds are the direct descendent of the dinosaurs. In
> many birds it's almost obvious once you realise this fact; look at the legs
> of ostriches or even chickens and recall what velociraptor legs were
> depicted to look like. In fact, for some birds if you replace the beak with
> a snout, and replace the wings with arms, you have a pretty good facsimile
> already of a dinosaur (considering that Dinosaurs are increasingly believed
> to have sported feathers of a sort anyway).
>
> It's for this reason that the most likely way to make pseudo-dinosaurs is
> actually back-engineering birds into saurian forms, by replacing or tweaking
> the genes that lead to upper limb, beak and tail development with parallel
> genes from related but structurally different organisms, such as lizards.
> How much those genetic regions will have diverged will have a lot to say in
> how hard this is. The way that a body is patterned by DNA is pretty
> complicated, in a paradoxically simple way. Pretty few proteins seem to
> control the formation of the body, but they do it by forming interference
> patterns. Imagine throwing stones in a pond, and the patterns of complicated
> waves formed when the waves from each splash hit each other. Now imagine
> trying to form the shape of a dinosaur by precisely throwing about thirty or
> fifty small stones into the pond at precise places and intervals. That's
> sort of how things work genetically, so it's hard to predict what'll happen
> if you replace or tweak any given gene.
>
> For more information on this, look up some of the body-patterning work done

> in *drosophila*: Although you'd think fruit flies are too far from birds and

> humans to have much relevance, it turns out that the proteins controlling
> their body plans are closely related to those in our own genomes, and most
> of what we now know about human body formation at a genetic level is derived
> from fly research. Of particular note, because it's freaky, is the mutation
> that makes the flies grow legs instead of

> antennae<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antennapedia>
> .

>
> On 26 February 2011 10:01, ostrich160 <tom.sprin...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > I have a plan to make (in a humane, non-cruel way) a Jurassic park.
> > But with a difference. I don't want these to be dinosaurs, I want them
> > to be dinosaur hybrids. Check out this article-
>

> >http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/life/genetic/real-jura...

[Cathal Garvey]

If anyone knew that they'd be a trillionaire already, I'm afraid..

Website: www.indiebiotech.com
Twitter: @onetruecathal

[William Heath]

Hi Tom,

I have done some research on this.  Craig Ventor has created an approach that allows for creating long chains of DNA.  He recently created the first "synthetic cell" by manually printing/assembling DNA from solutions of A, C, G, and T.  In his approach he would assemble short strands of DNA then use a cell's automatic repairing mechanism to splice them together.  I apologize that I can't remember the exact name of this process.  What is important to understand is the big picture of biology and where your project "fits in".  I had the honor of having Drew Endy speak at my diybio group at TechShop.  In my opinion your project falls into the synthetic biology area of biology because your doing forward engineering.  Drew Endy is the father of synthetic biology.  In my opinion you should study everything he is doing!  Forward engineering is the process by which you are engineering something new using known biological approaches/processes.  Unlike systems biology, which attempts to backward engineer natural biological systems, synthetic biology's goal is to allow an engineer to:

*  Create novel biological solutions using standard approaches
*  Use approaches that minimize or eliminate the unpredictable behavior of a cell (This is probably the hardest part of synthetic biology right now, cells only do things if it is in their best interest at the time)
*  Define and use standard biological parts/libraries to create complex biological solutions using abstracted approaches to minimize difficulties

In my opinion you are going to want to do the following to solve your problem:

1.  Figure out an inexpensive way to create the DNA pieces you want to insert/replace in the bird DNA (I think you should choose an ostrich because it is close to a Dinosaur and has the largest cell in the entire world, its egg)
2.  Find the hedge hog genes (body plan genes) in the Ostrich genome and compare/contrast them with similar species genomes that have the characteristics you want your organism to have
3.  Assemble the prototype DNA and test its feasibility with computer simulations/models to make sure they don't violate the most obvious DNA rules for syntax etc...
4.  Modify the DNA in the ostrich egg and cause it to grow
5.  Repeat steps 1 - 4 until you have the desired result

Let me attempt to assist you with some of these steps.  In step 1 we need to figure out an inexpensive way to get the dna pieces we want.  I have three solutions I am aware of that can assist with this task:

1.  Build small sequences by hand using the raw CGAT dna molecules and piecing them together using ecoli and/or yeasts auto correcting abilities

2.  Order the DNA from a 3rd party (http://www.blueheronbio.com/)

3.  Finding the sequences in nature and just cutting them out yourself

The problem with solution 1 is it is the most cutting edge approach and I don't believe there are any commercial off the shelf solutions for doing this as of yet.  Solution 2 is possible but probably extremely expensive.  Solution 3 is also possible and probably the cheapest/easiest of the approaches.  I am not going to go into all the details just giving you some high level approaches that could assist you.

In step 2 we need to identify the hedge hog genes in the Ostrich genome and compare and contrast them with similar species with the characteristics we want in our Dino-ostrich.  A simple example of obtaining genome DNA using biopython is:

from Bio import SeqIO
for seq_record in SeqIO.parse("ls_orchid.gbk", "genbank"):
    print seq_record.id
    print repr(seq_record.seq) 

    print len(seq_record)

You need to replace ls_orchid above with the name for the ostrich DNA. I found a mitochondrial genome for the ostrich here:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=genome&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=15673


I don't know what qbk that would map to.  You then need to use BLAST and other tools to identify the genes etc...

Step 3:

Use gene designer, emboss, and other simulation tools to simulate the prototype dna


Step 4:

An egg is alive.  There is only one cell in the egg.  The rest is just nutrition for that cell.  It is possible to get the cell and modify it.  Possible ways to do this are:

1.  Gene gun
2.  virus


I think the virus approach is easier.  My advice is create a virus that changes the DNA you want, then "fertilize the egg" to cause it to begin to grow.  Be aware that current success rates with modifying DNA are less then 1%.  So you will need over 100 ostrich eggs to hope to get one with the right DNA.


Anyway, I hope this has helped :>  Let me know if I can help in any way.

-Tim

[ostrich160]

thanks soooo much, I think the process is called electrophoresis. Well
about the synthetic biology part, it depends, which one is best used
to create creatures that we can actually see. I would guess synthetics
because as you said you can implant it into the egg. Also, if any
could find me a guide of how I could do it and better yet find me some
machines that could help me then that would be amazing! Thanks so much
you guys you have all been a huge help
Tom
p.s. if your wondering how I 14 year old can afford one of them huge
machines, look at this-
http://www.firebox.com/product/2702/Putty-Monsters?via=cat
I get 50% off the profits from it and we've already sold over 2000!

> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=genome&Cmd=ShowDetailView...

>
> I don't know what qbk that would map to.  You then need to use BLAST
> and other tools to identify the genes etc...
>
> Step 3:
>
> Use gene designer, emboss, and other simulation tools to simulate the
> prototype dna
>
> Step 4:
>
> An egg is alive.  There is only one cell in the egg.  The rest is just
> nutrition for that cell.  It is possible to get the cell and modify
> it.  Possible ways to do this are:
>
> 1.  Gene gun
> 2.  virus
>
> I think the virus approach is easier.  My advice is create a virus
> that changes the DNA you want, then "fertilize the egg" to cause it to
> begin to grow.  Be aware that current success rates with modifying DNA
> are less then 1%.  So you will need over 100 ostrich eggs to hope to
> get one with the right DNA.
>
> Anyway, I hope this has helped :>  Let me know if I can help in any way.
>
> -Tim
>

> On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 2:01 AM, ostrich160 <tom.sprin...@yahoo.co.uk>wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > I have a plan to make (in a humane, non-cruel way) a Jurassic park.
> > But with a difference. I don't want these to be dinosaurs, I want them
> > to be dinosaur hybrids. Check out this article-
>

> >http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/life/genetic/real-jura...

[Cathal Garvey]

When someone asks "Can I do X?" I always prefer to be the guy who says "Yes, here's how!" rather than "Er, no."..

Saying that, I can't in good conscience let you get built up on something that's not going to happen yet. I'm afraid our level of technology and knowledge is absolutely not ready for altering animals above the nematode-worm scale with any level of predictability. Perhaps by the time you're old enough to buy property (for the "park"), the technology will be ready. But there is no point telling you how to go about trying right now, because the methods we're using are simply never going to be able to do what you want. The methods that will allow us to turn an ostrich into a dino-hybrid simply haven't been invented yet.

For scale, consider that Craig Venter's team built a copy of an existing wild bacteria with barely any alterations, and to do it they had to synthesise and assemble several million letters of DNA. This was considered a landmark, cutting-edge achievement, and even given as much money as he had, we amateurs would probably fail right now if we attempted to copy that feat. Although I personally feel the news overhyped the significance of the achievement, it was still really, really hard.

Now consider that bacteria are both much, much smaller (in terms of genome size, i.e. how many letters of DNA you'll need) and much, much more complicated. Most of the DNA in bacteria that we've studied, we now understand. Most of the DNA in animals that we've studied is still a mystery to us, there are too many layers of complexity.

Like I said, by the time you're buying a park, this technology *might* be ready for the very wealthy. But right now, we're excited if we make a new bacteria!

And frankly, I wouldn't scoff at that. Bacteria do almost all of the heavy-lifting on this planet, making sure that there are nutrients in the soil we grow food in, making sure that waste doesn't build up until we die of it, and enabling us and every other large organism on the planet to live through symbioses we don't even yet understand. Being able to engineer bacteria is awesome, and that's something you *can* do now, if you invest enough time learning how and getting the equipment. Bacteria can glow, smell, detect things, move, ferment awesome compounds and medicines... you name virtually anything biology does, and bacteria can do it.

And once you've mastered engineering small things like bacteria, yeast and perhaps even nematode worms, you'll be practically an expert in genetic engineering when the technology to design and "print" an ostrosaur emerges..

Again, I hate to rain on the parade. But these are the facts; it is simply impossible in 2011 to design animals the way you are planning.

[ostrich160]

so you cant create a organism at the moment visible to the human eye?
I would love to create a new form of bacteria, but I dont know what
microscope to get so I can see it and all the other stuff. If any
could show me a starter guide to synthetic biology or better yet a
starter kit, I would be amazed. Anyway, I thought venter built one
from scratch, I'm talking about combining organisms. Anyway, if you
find anyway way to create something like this or even a way to create
a creature visible to the naked eye then tell me.

thanks again
Tom

[ostrich160]

oh, and forgot to ask on the other post, can you tell me any devices
that can help me?
thanks

On Feb 27, 10:33 am, Cathal Garvey <cathalgar...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Cathal Garvey]

Well, hm. Venter didn't create a "new" organism, though the news certainly did give people that impression because it sounded exciting. He basically copied an existing wild bacteria, by synthesising the entire genome and injecting it into a cell whose existing genome had been destroyed. The new genome was recognised by the cell's machinery, read from, and it took over the cell. The cell then divided and continued to live and grow. The catch is, the genome was pretty much the same as the one that the cell already had, give or take. So as far as "creating a new cell from scratch", it was baby steps. A huge technical achievement, but on the scale of what synthetic biology is going to become in coming years, it was really simple stuff.

It's not a matter of size, you see. I mean, bacteria *are* visible to the human eye; they form colonies and biofilms, often quite complex ones with areas dedicated to different tasks, not unlike simple animals. However, each cell is functionally much more simple than an animal or plant or fungal cell; it has pretty simple pathways (relatively speaking of course) that perform most functions of the cell, it has a small genome that all tends to work the same way, and most of the time proteins are read from genes and thats-it. By contrast, even the simplest of eucaryotes (animals, plants, fungi, yeasts, protists... anything but bacteria and archaea) have layers of complexity that we don't yet understand. They modify many proteins after they are made in ways that might or might not affect function. They all have a nucleus, dividing the work of the cell neatly into at least two portions. They are just more complicated, and the job of making a totally synthetic eukaryote, even one pieced together from a few other organisms, is a whole different ballgame to making the world's smallest bacteria like Venter's team did.

As to a "starter kit for Synthetic Biology"... there isn't one yet. There are several people around the world (myself included) trying to get one ready, but it's not yet that straightforward. The methods are all available online, although they're kind of all over the place, and you can set yourself up by buying equipment on ebay or from diybio community companies like OpenPCR.org and Pearlbiotech.com, and get bacteria and DNA from other members (at least as much as is available), but there's no one-stop-shop for DIYbio synthetic biology stuff at present.

If you wanna get started in synthetic biology for bacteria, your first step is to learn about handling and growing bacteria. I suggest you find a few starter projects in microbiology and give them a try. I posted a guide to making Potato-dextrose broth/agar here before, it's probably the easiest one you can make at home. With that, you can either grow yeasts/fungi or bacilli. I suggest learning with Yeast, you can get it in a local shop, it's edible, not very fussy and it'll behave like a bacterium. Just remember it's not technically a bacterium. That's kinda good for you, because it's large enough to see with a microscope if memory serves me right; you can get a student microscope and look at yeast cells growing and budding without any super-expensive lenses I think.

Once you're comfortable with sterilisation, incubation and handling of bacteria and yeast, going from there to things like DNA extraction, simple transformation (getting DNA into them) etc., is often just a reworking of skills you've already learned. In some ways DNA is easier to handle than bacteria, because it's not necessary to keep it sterile for most purposes. So starting with bacteria will prepare you for DNA work, and DNA work allows you to create DNA to alter and engineer bacteria!

I think I recall you saying you're living in the UK: bear in mind that making genetically modified organisms is covered by legislation there and here in Ireland. You'll need to get a license once you hit that point in your genetic modification career, unless you're working within the loopholes (like I am!). Hopefully within a few months I'll have a kit to offer that'll be legal for you to learn with without having to get a license!

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[Patrik]

Cathal pretty much covered it, but just a few additional points for
clarification:

- Yes, people have engineered organisms larger than a single cell. But
so far, it's mainly on the order of inserting green fluorescent
protein in mice, frogs, rabbits etc. And keep in mind that inserting a
single gene that doesn't have to do anything else but light up is as
close to "engineering" an organism, as tagging a car with a spray
paint is to being a car mechanic. Even so, inserting this single gene
into one of these higher organisms is significantly harder than doing
the same in bacteria or yeast.

- And just so you don't get your hopes up: No, we can't really extract
useful dino DNA from amber. That's just a movie thing. After millions
of years, it's so badly degraded and fragmented that we can learn far
more about dinosaurs from chicken DNA than from any snippets you might
be able to find in amber. (Woolly mammoths in arctic ice are a whole
different matter though!)

[General Oya]

Darnit!

I guess I won't be growing any Milla's in the basement.

Multi-pass!

[Cathal Garvey]

Oddly enough, cloning a person is probably easier than engineering an ostrosaur..

[Cathal Garvey]

That is, if you're willing to accept about 99/100 of the surviving Millas that result being horribly deformed or defective in some way.

[Patrik]

Not to mention raising said baby clone to adulthood...

Vat-grown adult clone bodies are another one of those scifi movie
tropes with no basis in real science. Not having to wait a couple of
decades for your clone to grow up makes for a better script, I guess.
Just light Faster-Than-Light drives - having the hero arrive at the
nearest star system as a 70 year old codger doesn't make for a great
action movie.

On Feb 28, 1:38 pm, Cathal Garvey <cathalgar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> That is, if you're willing to accept about 99/100 of the surviving Millas
> that result being horribly deformed or defective in some way.
>

> On 28 February 2011 21:37, Cathal Garvey <cathalgar...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Oddly enough, cloning a person is probably easier than engineering an
> > ostrosaur..
>

> > On 28 February 2011 17:34, General Oya <general...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> Darnit!
>
> >> I guess I won't be growing any Milla's in the basement.
>
> >> Multi-pass!
>

> ...
>
> read more »

[Forrest Flanagan]

Well, once you get beyond .9 C the time dilation lessens the effect of aging on the character, but the transit would make for a long wait for everyone else.

--

[William Heath]

Hi Tom,

I will tell you what I think is the best starter kit for synthetic biology.  I am not an expert but I want to give it a try anyway :>  Here it goes:

1.  Get yourself the same kit that the iGEM teams are getting.  It is possible for you to form a highschool team here: http://ung.igem.org/High_School_Division (You have until the end of February to do this, so hurry!!!)  I heard you can get the kit from ginkgobioworks.com if iGEM won't send you one

2.  Order some ecoli from Carolina Biological (I ordered the gfp kit, it helped me understand some of the real basics of synthetic biology: http://www.carolina.com/product/life+science/biotechnology+kits+%26+materials/transformation+and+advanced+techniques/ap+biology+lab+6-+molecular+biology+-+green+gene+colony+transformation+8-station+student+kit.do)

3.  The following came in the kit above:

Module 1 (8-Station Kit) includes:
E. coli
200 µL Plasmid DNA (0.005 µg/&microL)
8 vials Transformation Buffer (3 mL per vial)
8 vials LB Broth (3 mL per vial)
Ready-to-Pour Plates (for 40 plates)
4 mL Ampicillin (10 mg/ml)
1 oz Spreading Beads
28 Sterile Loops
16 Transformation Tubes
48 Sterile Bulb Pipets
Wire Inoculating Loop
Instructions with Student Master Sheets

4.  Growth medium for ecoli (LB agar)

5.  Pressure cooker for sterilizing the plates/eqiupment and making the growth medium (Basically a poor man's autoclave.  You could buy a professional one like this if you want:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Autoclave-Steam-Sterilizer-Automatic-Timer-New-/350435079502?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item51978ef54e
)

6.  Scale for weighing chemicals etc...

7.  Fridge for storing the cells and petri dishes  (We just used a dorm fridge)

8.  Graduated cylinder for measuring exact amounts of fluids

You can see pictures of diybio SF doing this here:

http://diybio.org/blog/diybio-san-francisco-glow-in-the-dark-1

Other useful equipment would be:

fume hood:  http://cgi.ebay.com/Flow-Sciences-2350-3-Ft-Blance-Fume-Lab-Hood-/140506686005?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item20b6d9e235 (Used when plating petri dishes with growth medium and cells to avoid contamination.  John Schloernden of lively labs created his own using a vaccum cleaner and an aquarium if you want to save money)

co2 incubator for culturing cells:  http://cgi.ebay.com/VWR-SHELLAB-SHELDON-5015-AIR-JACKETED-CO2-INCUBATOR-/370487151649?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5642c14c21  (There was talk of designing your own incubator using a box and a light bulb if you want to save money)

micro pipette: http://cgi.ebay.com/Variable-volume-pipette-pipettor-pipetter-micro-New-/380065178879?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item587da664ff (Don't know of a diybio kind of solution for this :( I know of a specific use with the igem kit of parts that come in a dehydrated form on paper.  You have to add water and pcr duplicate them with the micropipette)


If you want to build something that lives and functions that the naked eye can see you may want to look at bio printing:

Bio Printing:

http://singularityhub.com/2009/06/08/growing-organs-in-the-lab/  (You just need the following to do this:

1.  hp inkjet printer
2.  tissue culture scafold kit:  (http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/Lookup.do?N5=All&N3=mode+matchpartialmax&N4=collagen+hydrogel&D7=0&D10=collagen+hydrogel&N1=S_ID&ST=RS&N25=0&F=PR)

Here is an example of bio printing using plant materials:

http://www.washington.edu/dxarts/profile_research.php?who=kudla&project=EdenBumber

or you can purchase your very own bioprinter here:

http://www.organovo.com/products/novogen-mmx-bioprinter

An interesting project I have wanted to try involves interfacing with a muscle you would print using the bioprinter using signals like that of backyard brains.  Check out there awsome little kit here:

backyardbrains.com

The coolest piece of equipment I can imagine getting my hands on would be a realtime infared protein scanning/reading/monitoring device.  GFP has been used to understand what goes in and out of a cell but to understand what is happening inside the cell you have to kill the cell and analyze the GFP inside of it to see what gene were turned on and off.  Infared proteins can be monitored in realtime so you can see exactly what is happening in the cell without killing it.  I tried to find the exact piece of equipment you would use but couldn't find it.  This approach is crucial to your project for the following reasons:

1.  You can reverse engineer the metabolic pathways that are building the 3d body plan using this approach by tagging the hedge hog genes that are turning on and off to cause the body plan to occur  (You may need functional magnetic resonance imaging however)

2.  You can verify that genes are actually turning on/off with your dna plan.  Basically it acts as a kind of programming debugger if you know what that is

I threw alot of stuff at you but can't help but share with you things I have learned over the years.  Nobody seems to be willing to give non-phd's a chance to try anything thats extremely difficult but I don't share there skepticism :>  I think you can do anything you put your mind to!  I have many other ideas on how you can accomplish this goal.  Feel free to continue to ask questions.

-Tim

P.S.

They are right that certain areas of biology are not completely known yet but I believe there is enough to try even if there is a high likelihood of failure.

[moteyalpha]

Dating, marriage and children is easier than cloning a person, but perhaps not by much. :)

[Phil]

On Feb 27, 2:07 am, William Heath <wghe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Tom,
>
> I have done some research on this.  Craig Ventor has created an approach
> that allows for creating long chains of DNA.

You're probably thinking of Gibson assembly, named after Dan Gibson,
described here:
http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v6/n5/full/nmeth.1318.html