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Neanderthals like the one depicted in this museum reconstruction died out tens of thousands of years ago, but geneticist George Church says it may be possible to bring their DNA back into the gene pool.
Pioneering Harvard geneticist George Church suggests that the day is coming when we'll want to reverse-engineer the Neanderthal genome and pass the now-extinct creatures' advantages to our own progeny. All that's needed would be an "extremely adventurous female human" to serve as a surrogate mother.
During an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, Church was asked whether a Neanderthal baby would be born in his lifetime. "That depends on a hell of a lot of things," the 58-year-old replied, "but I think so."
Is he serious?
Well, Church is serious about the promise of synthetic biology, which involves tinkering with the chemical components of DNA to add artificial twists to the code of life. Microbes could be tweaked to produce better biofuels or harness solar power. White blood cells could be rejiggered to fight cancer or other diseases, using a tamed form of the HIV virus. And extinct species could be brought back to life through a combination of cloning and genetic engineering.
The species-resurrection scenario would involve inserting the reconstructed nuclear genetic material from the extinct creature into the living egg of a closely related present-day species, sparking the cell into dividing, and then implanting the resulting embryo into the womb of a female from the present-day species. It's been discussed in the context of using elephants to bring back mammoths, or chicken hens to bring back dinosaurs.
Technically speaking, the progeny wouldn't be a mammoth or a dinosaur, but rather an elephant or chicken exhibiting the genetic traits of their long-departed relatives. A similar technique could be applied using Neanderthal DNA: Chunks of reconstructed genetic code could be used to reprogram human cells and produce increasingly Neanderthal-like stem cells.
"If we do that often enough, then we would generate a stem cell line that would get closer and closer to the corresponding sequence of the Neanderthal," Church told Der Spiegel. "We developed the semi-automated procedure required to do that in my lab. Finally, we assemble all the chunks in a human stem cell, which would enable you to finally create a Neanderthal clone."
In the current political, ethical and technological climate, there's no way this scenario could come to pass. Researchers are closing in on a high-quality Neanderthal genome, but they're not quite there yet. The Russian and Korean scientists behind the mammoth-cloning project say they're years away from doing their experiment. And the idea of getting humans involved in cloning experiments is still the stuff of science fiction.
However, Church's point is that the Neanderthal genetic code may be so valuable that the hurdles will be worth overcoming.
"Neanderthals might think differently than we do," he told Der Spiegel. "We know that they had a larger cranial size. They could even be more intelligent than us. When the time comes to deal with an epidemic or getting off the planet or whatever, it's conceivable that their way of thinking could be beneficial."
Theoretically, it might be possible to create a whole population of neo-Neanderthals and see how they differ from the usual breed of Homo sapiens, Church said.
"Curiosity may be part of it, but it's not the most important driving force," Church said. "The main goal is to increase diversity. The one thing that is bad for society is low diversity. This is true for culture or evolution, for species and also for whole societies. If you become a monoculture, you are at great risk of perishing. Therefore the re-creation of Neanderthals would be mainly a question of societal risk avoidance."
Does the idea of Neanderthal surrogate motherhood sound sensible when he puts it that way? Or does it still sound like a science-fiction nightmare? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.
More about the DNA frontier:
- How sex with Neanderthals made us stronger
- Neanderthal DNA lives on in some of us
- How synthetic biology will change us
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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Only good part of this, is the coronary this would give to the Catholic church, which would be the height or irony.
I have two words: Jurassic Park.
Shades of Jurassic Park.
I wouldn't want anyone I know to be the mama.
Some baby mama will volunteer for this if offered welfare and an Obama phone.
I am hesitant since we have enough problems with Neanderthal ultra-conservative Republican men and of course the Sarah Palins and Michelle Bachmans, not to mention the NRA leadership.
I suspect it is a Republican plot. They are safely betting these Neanderthal semi-clones will enthusiastically support, if not reenergize, the Republican Party. Plus, a Republican presidential candidate is desperately needed for 2016. The 2016 primary completely exhausted the Republican Party gene pool.
My understanding is the Koch brothers are funding the good professors research in the hope of a miracle Presidential Republican candidate by 2050. While the Koch's do not want to throw good money after bad in their attempt to buying an election, they are realists who recognize the Republican candidate gene pool was completely decimated in the 2012 primary making this as good long term investment.
I have a neighbor that looks like the twin of the neanderthal pictured. A Texas red neck tea party neanderthal species. He hangs with his sub-species cousin, the Louisana red neck tea party neanderthal.
LOL, thank you, needed a good laugh!
Maybe those Geico commercials will come true: cave men living among us...and being the victims of prejudice.
Alley Oop, oop, oop, oop-oop.
Now this is the most intelligent comment I've seen so far.
Thank you Mr Binkie.
I think if there are real benefits to be seen in using Neanderthal DNA, there is nothing wrong with that. As for the moral and ethical implications of cloning an actual Neanderthal, I think we've come a long way from Mengele and the like. No scientist would create life this complex and unique to simply treat it as a lab specimen, but we would be wasting an opportunity to learn from the accomplishment. This person would live as normal a life as the rest of us, I'm sure. I do wonder about one thing, though. Since they did die out as a species, I think we need to figure out just exactly why they did. If it was a climate or immunity issue, for example, that would need to be addressed and overcome before we brought them back into existence.
At times, the sheer stupidity of supposedly intelligent people frightens me. Why would we want to take a massive step backwards in the evolution (or creation - depending on your belief) of the human species? As many have mentioned on this post, the Neanderthals were, for some reason or reasons, unable to survive as environmental conditions changed, and became extinct. Now, some scientists want to reverse evolution and re-create a human progenitor which died out due to natural causes many years ago, just because they think they can.
Remember, the disaster of Chernobyl was created by scientists wanting to test the limits of their expertise, and we all know how that turned out. A great many novels and screenplays have been written using the theme of cataclysmic events kicked off by scientists meddling where they should not, creating scenarios which they ultimately could not control and which had disastrous results.
I will not even attempt to get into the ethical and moral arguments against such an "experiment," since the idiots proposing it obviously have neither ethics nor morals and I would just be wasting my time.
I will however, offer a warning to the scientific community - please have the foresight to realize what horrors you may unleash, just because you have the power to do so. The question to be answered is not "Can we do this," but instead, "Should we?"
Calling it a step backward in evolution is not painting a whole picture here. We look to our history in order to avoid repeating mistakes, right? If you look at it this way, we would simply be learning more about ourselves as a species and maybe even improving, too. We already know that Neanderthals had some superior traits in their DNA, and including those into ours may ultimately help us. Using Chernobyl as a comparison to this idea is also confusing to me. The incident at Chernobyl was caused due to a series of complacent mistakes on the part of engineers. It is well documented, and we have already improved on the technology since then. If we can properly and humanely re-introduce this species into the world safely, and also gain knowledge about and improve ourselves, why shouldn't we?
Mikey01....seriously? Look around. We can't take care of ourselves, live in peace, be kind to each other and you think introducing a species that was very likely highly aggressive and territorial is a good idea? I guess if we don't like the second one then performing an abortion will apparently be the "in thing to do to it."
It is narrow and irrational to think that 7 billion of any species (I'm referencing humans, here) would all be able to take care of themselves, live in peace, and be kind to each other. Also, we live alongside many species right now that are highly aggressive and territorial. To assume we simply would not know how to live alongside another one really is not giving our species, which would include your ancestors, enough credit. We lived alongside wolves and several other species early in our existence. Today, we have domesticated dogs, and there are countless other species we have learned to co-habitate with. It sounds like you have more of an issue with political and other societal issues, which really don't directly involve a simple scientific idea to further ourselves as a species.
This has already been done a few times.. The cases that come to mind are named Romney, McConnell, Boehner, Cantor, Ryan, Paul, and a few others. The ones that tried and failed are ones like Bachmann and Ayotte.
Ourdoc:
That still puts them a million years ahead of Pelosi, Reid, Obama, and other Dems.
The dead is dead for a reason, let them be !!!!!
OMg. Really?
Intelligence is not just a genetic trait, it is social phenomenon. If our modern parents raise the neanderthal baby, the baby will have our intelligence and our culture. That's the best case scenario. In other cases the baby will be either defective or mentally deficient. But even in the best case the adventurous mother will have to answer poor kids questions. Why is everyone laughing at me? Why do I look so different? Why no one wants to play with me?
I would day, keep the reconstructed DNA in the fridge. If the really desperate times come when we need some extra diversity to our gene pool, then we will decide if the risk of getting mutants with ruined live is worth it, given the alternative of our extinction.
Koch bros will fund it,their party needs more votes...
Some research on RNA points to Europeans having cross bred with the Neanderthal's. Asian and African RNA is free of the Neanderthal strains.
Breeding with Neanderthals only a theory? Clearly the author hasn't been to Texas.
Octamom!
Yeah Doc - see you at Neander-palooza fest 2050. Actually, I think this DNA thing was already done in a 1950's B movie....
Bride of the Neanderthal?
Neanderthal Hookers?
Franken-baby?
PS raising a neanderthal teenager could be extremely dangerous, sort of like raising a chimpanzee or gorrilla.