In a message dated 9/9/99 7:13:05 PM Pacific Daylight Time, bradbury@www.aeiveos.com writes:
>They have engineered Drosophila with legs growing out of the head
> and I believe with extra sets of wings. It simply involves adding
> putting a gene that makes and "X" and under the regulation of
> the "Y" region control element, i.e.
> if (I_Am_In_Region_Y)
> Synthesize_Collection_Of_Cells_for_X();
Technically:
They didn't engineer Antennapedia or Bithorax, they found them. We probably could engineer them now; alterations to developmental genes are pretty routine for the major experimental animals. Also, those particular mutations are to region-identifying genes.
> If it looks like something you already grow, you could probably assemble
> them in a fairly ad hoc fasion.
Yes, but it gets harder away from pet organisms. Details matter; a lot of
these
things are concentration-dependent and you have to get the concentrations
right. It's a real problem for "engineering" people - in addition to ethical
issues
about lack of choice there's a very high chance that you'd make a few goofs
fine-tuning the process and that's *really* unacceptable.