Vague question on genetic engineering...

[Tranquility]

Hello all

 

I was asked today by a pupil how close we are to being able to genetically engineer a new species?

 

I said "a long way" to put off any other questions but he did make me wonder... the little swine!

 

So in my best inner London school boy accent... "Sir, Aow close is science geezers to making a hole nu animal like?"

 

Any help will be greatly appreciated by me and met with a non-interested blank gaze by him no doubt!

[Mr Skeptic]

Ah, that is a really hard question, mainly because "species" is such a nebulous concept. If by "species" you mean a kind of organism that can interbreed with itself but not other groups, then we have already made multiple different species (changing the number of chromosomes, for example, would suffice). If you mean having new/distinct traits, we have already added new traits to various organisms, for example "golden rice" which we have taken genes from other species (daffodil and bacteria) and incorporated it into the rice so that it produces beta carotene (vitamin A precursor). We've created plenty of species that produce Green Fluorescent Protein (from jellyfish), which is useful for research purposes. We've created several breeds of domestic animals and varieties/cultivars of domesticated plants (the banana perhaps the most extreme example).

[Genecks]

New animal species or new species of organism in general?

[CharonY]

Polyploidy (i.e. addition of chromosomal sets) have traditionally been done by simple breeding rather than genetic engineering. Truth is, large scale changes are easier done by breeding than by genetic modifications.

For instance, Chihuahuas and Doberman could be considered reproductively isolated.

Many more examples could be found in sterile or non sterile plant and animal hybrids.

[Tranquility]

Thanks everyone for you help.

 

I did pass on the message, and he even looked quite impressed when I told him about golden rice.

 

I guess what I am wondering is are we able to create an organism that could say behave like concrete, or to do any of the industrial process we have now. Can we control what it requires to live such as carbon dioxide or methane instead of oxygen?

 

I know this is all a bit vague but biology, and genetic engineering especially is not my best subject.

[pioneer]

What I thought would be an interesting genetic engineering project would be to breed plants that use solar energy to pump water to a height. The water runs downhill to generate electricity.

 

I can picture a riverside, full of these solar pump plants pumping and/or weeping into an elevated canal system, which merges into a larger downhill pipe, that runs a turbine. Besides power, we get purified water. It is sort of low tech except for the plant genetics.

[Tranquility]

What I thought would be an interesting genetic engineering project would be to breed plants that use solar energy to pump water to a height. The water runs downhill to generate electricity.

 

I can picture a riverside, full of these solar pump plants pumping and/or weeping into an elevated canal system, which merges into a larger downhill pipe, that runs a turbine. Besides power, we get purified water. It is sort of low tech except for the plant genetics.

 

That is exactly the sort of thing I mean!

 

How far are we from doing that sort of genetic engineering.

[Mr Skeptic]

Except that plants don't do much pumping of water. You'd have to completely redesign the entire water system of plants to do that. It would be easier to simply modify the plant to give electricity directly.

[CharonY]

You could do that with bacteria rather than plants. Also plants use capillary forces to move liquids. Finally, the suggestions are pretty much sci-fi at this point.

 

We are limited by the known biology and not only that genetic engineering rarely does allow the transfer of complex traits from one organism to another. Small things like individual biochemcial pathways may work, though they often interfere with the evolved regulatory mechanisms of the organism in question and may lead to odd results. That is why the increase in productivity of bacterial fermentation has not made the expected quantum jump (as compared to traditional screening for high producers). What we can do is more in the smaller area, but we are still building up the foundation for the understanding of the complex regulatory mechanisms.

[kitkat]

Ah, that is a really hard question, mainly because "species" is such a nebulous concept. If by "species" you mean a kind of organism that can interbreed with itself but not other groups, then we have already made multiple different species (changing the number of chromosomes, for example, would suffice). If you mean having new/distinct traits, we have already added new traits to various organisms, for example "golden rice" which we have taken genes from other species (daffodil and bacteria) and incorporated it into the rice so that it produces beta carotene (vitamin A precursor). We've created plenty of species that produce Green Fluorescent Protein (from jellyfish), which is useful for research purposes. We've created several breeds of domestic animals and varieties/cultivars of domesticated plants (the banana perhaps the most extreme example).

 

Science has done this deliberately in adding a new trait. How would this be done in the natural world?