• Question: Can we geneticly modify a new species of hybrids

    Asked by broforce1234 to Alison, Hannah, Jonny, MarthaNari, Paul on 22 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Alison Whitaker

      Alison Whitaker answered on 22 Jun 2015:

      I’d say it depends on the species, but I think this is definitely possible. If the species are closely related e.g. two types of birds, a hybrid is more likely than species far away from each other e.g. human and octopus (even if we do have the same eyes). In fact, a mule is a donkey and horse hybrid that occurs naturally, but it isn’t able to reproduce.

    • Photo: Jonny Brooks-Bartlett

      Jonny Brooks-Bartlett answered on 24 Jun 2015:

      I agree with Alison on this one. The species have to be relatively close for the hybrid to work.
      Also we would have to make sure that the genetic modification that we made was actually compatible with the other body functions. This is probably one of the hardest parts.

      Although it would be cool if we could get bitten by a mutant spider and become Spiderman 🙂

    • Photo: Martha Havenith

      Martha Havenith answered on 24 Jun 2015:

      Yes, the thing we can probably do right now already is to take one specific gene from one animal, and put it into another species. If we know exactly what that gene does, we can be pretty sure we don’t mess up the ‘host animal’ by inserting the new gene. Like, inserting one sheep gene into a mouse to make their hair go curly…. still very difficult, but probably doable. Though who would want that… 🙂
      Mixing up two species completely is much more complicated – as Alison and Jonny have said, those species would have to be close to one another already, and we might end up with an animal that’s not very good at life…

    • Photo: Paul Brack

      Paul Brack answered on 26 Jun 2015:

      Well, we kind of already have with stuff like ligers (lion and tiger) and zebroids (zebra and horse), which were both bred deliberately by humans. So yes, we’ve already been there ad done that!

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