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Asked by anon-98237 to Aaron, Abbey, Keith, Natalie, Pete on 9 Nov 2015.
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Aaron Boardley answered on 9 Nov 2015:
Cross-breeding animals usually involves finding two that are quite similar – such as a lion and a tiger (cross breeding these creates a ‘liger’ – honestly!). This means their DNA will have a similar structure and their chromosomes can pair up, so you can combine bits from both.
Horses and narwhals have very different DNA, so you wouldn’t be able to cross-breed them in the way you could with a lion and tiger, as the chromosomes just wouldn’t pair up the right way.
Would you be able to artificially combine their DNA in the lab using a bit more trickery? Well, I’m not a genetic engineer, so I’m a bit out of my depth now. I’m afraid I can’t say what might be possible in future!
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Natalie Garrett answered on 11 Nov 2015:
Hello Sheep Lord!
Nice username, lord of sheep.
First of all: I like how you think. I am super keen for mythical animals to be created in a lab. Second of all: I am sadly not a genetic engineer, so I don’t know if this would work or not. HOWEVER, I say: maybe. They’re both mammals, which helps.
The only kind of genetic modification that I’m familiar with is with fluorescence – you might have heard of something called green fluorescent protein GFP). It’s what was used to make mice that glow green when you shine ultra violet light on them, like these:
The scientists who developed this method took genes from jellyfish that made them produce GFP and then they stuck the genes into the mice. One application of inserting genes like this into mice is to make something called a brainbow, where every brain cell glows in an array of colours under ultra violet light, like this:
The brainbow method lets us track and trace nerve cell development in the brain, which is useful for studying diseases like Alzheimer’s.So as you can see, there’s already some pretty awesome stuff going on with genetic modification. The only issue I see with your question is ethics. You can’t just go about splicing different animals together to see what happens. You have to justify why it’s needed, and whether the animal would be healthy and have a normal life at the end of it. So, for that reason I doubt we’ll get unicorns any time soon (at least not in Europe – other countries have less strict rules on ethics…)
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Keith Franklin answered on 11 Nov 2015:
It isn’t unfortunately, for the reasons Aaron said below. However you could have great fun imagining all sort of useful animals. Cross a sheep with a kangaroo and get a woolly jumper……
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