Experts believe that Steven Spielberg's futuristic science fiction film Jurassic Park could one day become a reality thanks to avian DNA.
So, biochemist from Oxford University Alison Woollard (Alison Woollard) says that the idea of reviving dinosaurs does not belong to the category of fiction, since scientists can get all the material necessary for this process. In an interview with a reporter, an employee of one of the oldest universities in Europe cites the example of the discovery of a mosquito, in the stomach of which was the blood of an animal that lived on our planet 46 million years ago.
“We know birds are direct descendants of dinosaurs. This has been proven by a continuous line of fossils tracing the evolution of creatures from the Velociraptor (carnivorous bipedal dinosaurs) or Tyrannosaurus (carnivorous dinosaurs) to the birds that fly around us today. But the most famous fossil showing the transition from dinosaurs to modern birds is Archeopteryx, an extinct Jurassic bird, says biochemist Wullard. “These evolutionary processes mean that genes that control dinosaur traits are buried deep in the DNA of modern birds. So we can rewind evolution by switching these genes."
Thus, in order to recreate a complete genome (hereditary material containing biological information), scientists will have to combine millions of short fragments of nucleic acids in the right order, putting them together like a huge puzzle.