This Is Jurassic Park? Scientists Were Able To Extract DNA From An Insect Embedded In Tree Resin For The First Time Ever
Forbes- Somewhere in South America, a miner finds a piece of amber. Inside the hardened tree resin, he notes what seems to be a mosquito. Using advanced equipment, scientists extract the last meal of the blood-sucking insect. Thanks to the genetic code perfectly preserved in the still intact blood cells, the scientists then clone a dinosaur. The novel and later successful movie franchise "Jurassic Park" popularized the idea that amber could preserve soft tissue and even DNA-molecules over millions of years. But real attempts to extract DNA from amber or similar substances were unsuccessful to this day, and resin-embedded samples were deemed unsuitable for genetic examinations.
Unlike in the movies, fossil tree resin is not a good choice to preserve DNA, a fragile molecule carrying genetic instructions for the development, functioning, growth and reproduction of all known organisms. When a viscous substance traps a small animal, the soft tissues start to decay immediately and most DNA is lost before the entire animal is even encapsulated. Even if some DNA is preserved, the resin's chemical compounds will react with it, destroying it over time.
The study concluded that although it is very fragile, DNA was still preserved in the samples. First attempts using ethanol to dissolve the resin surrounding the beetles proved to be counterproductive. The alcohol reacts with the resin, destroying any DNA. This observation may explain why past attempts to extract DNA were always unsuccessful. Even after perfecting the extraction process switching chemicals, new problems emerged. The polymerase chain reaction (or PCR) is widely used to replicate small fragments of DNA, but the researchers discovered that this method is not very effective with DNA extracted from resinous materials. It is possible, so the authors, that substances found in the resin inhibit the chemicals used to copy single DNA strings. Only after carefully cleaning the samples and repeating the PCR-process various times, enough DNA was replicated to study the genomics of the embedded organism.
Fuck it. If the world is going to hell in a handbasket, let's throw some dinosaurs in that handbasket before we all cook together. I've watched Jurassic Park way too many times to believe that Chekhov's amber isn't going to make its way back into this simulation we are all living and 2020 is the perfect year to get the ball rolling since it will stay off the radar of the fun police weenies that will say bringing back gigantic apex predators is "dangerous" and "should never be done for any possible reason" (extra emphasis on the air quotes I make with my fingers while rolling my eyes followed by doing the jerk off motion with my hand).
Before anyone asks, yes I read the part of the article that said DNA does not preserve well in tree resin for a long time and no I didn't quite understand it because it was written in fancy Forbes talk. My retort to all that scientific mumbo jumbo is what a wise man once told me…
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All you gotta do is take whatever shred of DNA from that amber, throw it into a frog or whatever lizard science deems appropriate (don't you daaaare say bird), and watch this crazy fuck cook up the Crustaceous Period 2.0 right in front of your flabbergasted eyes.
Is it that easy? Probably? Definitely? The bottom line is we now officially have a race between who we see first: Aliens or dinosaurs. Aliens should be about a -350 favorite right now but they were -10000 before this story came out.
There is only one way to celebrate this momentous occasion. That's right. HIT THE MOTHERFUCKING MUSIC!!!