12-22-2016, 03:47 PM
(12-19-2016, 10:29 PM)Rynn Wrote: In a nutshell the answer is: difficult to extremely-difficult. Most phenotype traits are an emergent consequence of thousands of interacting genes and the environment. To get to the type of reliable, radical (i.e. leads to speciation) genetic engineering we have in OA will require a far greater understanding of developmental biology and phenomics. When we'll have that knowledge IRL and what consequences there will be is anyone's guess.
That said there are many things that would be simple and we are technically capable of doing them now. There are plenty of traits that are determined by a small group of genes or even a single gene. Combined with genetic epidemiology (a field that's going to explode the cheaper DNA sequencing gets) we could find strong correlations between certain gene combinations and traits and be able to engineer them even if we're not entirely sure what the mechanism behind it is.
Your comment interests me. You might've heard about the projects that are aiming to create a elephant-mammoth hybrid. They plan to do this through germline engineering of an elephant fetus, so that its DNA more closely matchs that of a mammoth. Through successive generations, they plan to eventually create a genetic duplicate of the extinct mammoth.
Heres the question I have. If they eventually create a breeding population of mammoths that are virtually identical to the real thing, wouldn't that have to include similar muscle groups and what not? We know that homo sapiens and homo neanderthal had fairly different musculatures, so wouldn't the same be true for mammoths and elephants?
Are they able to account for variables like that? Is there some trick for influencing myogenisis in the fetus?