• Question: can you recreate the bone structure to make a new animal?

    Asked by anon-227587 to William, Thibaut "Tibo", Harry, Georgia, Emily, Aimee on 15 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: William Wiseman

      William Wiseman answered on 15 Nov 2019:

      There are materials now that are artificial bone and can be used in things like hip joints. They are very hard ceramic or titanium metal but they exist already. I’m not sure you can make a whole new animal from them but people are building robots!

    • Photo: Thibaut Deviese

      Thibaut Deviese answered on 16 Nov 2019:

      Yes it is possible to recreate bone but why would you like to make a new animal? And how would it look like? If you come to my lab I can show you bones from a lot of different animals. Some of these animals do not exist anymore.

    • Photo: Aimee Egglestone

      Aimee Egglestone answered on 18 Nov 2019:

      I think this one is less of a question of “Could we” and more of a question of “Should we”! Playing with the nature in that particular way is a really big No-No in the scientific community because it can get dangerous and often border on cruel for the animals you’re experimenting on!

    • Photo: Emily Sparkes

      Emily Sparkes answered on 18 Nov 2019:

      You wouldn’t be able to create a new animal just by altering the bone structure. For it to be a new animal you would have to change its DNA. Just changing the bones would make a mutated version of the original animal

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