The Implications Involving Dinosaur DNA
Of course it was the movie Jurassic Park who seemed to coin the phrase “Dino DNA.” This movie gave the public the thought that, a) it is possible to find dinosaur DNA and b) we can clone dinosaurs from this DNA. This essay is not going to pick apart Jurassic Park’s scientific value, however it will share the current knowledge and information on dinosaur DNA. The discovery of DNA is important because it may uncover different bits of information. The idea of cloning dinosaurs, especially at this point is out of the question. It is really hard to clone living animals today, with full DNA and genome strands, we can’t even think about recreating animals millions of years ago.
DNA is a protein molecule that is proven to contain the genetic sequence of any particular species. Every species has a different type of DNA. This is how we differentiate between different species today. Humans have different DNA than rats. Rats have different DNA than mice, etc, etc. However, we know that DNA hold-up needs a living body to keep “alive.” Therefore, DNA decomposes with soft tissue, as the animal decays over time. For the most part of dinosaur studies, finding DNA from these dinosaurs was unheard of because dinosaurs lived over 65 million years ago. Until recently, it was previously thought that DNA, under optimal circumstances, could perhaps be preserved for only about 10,000 years. This is long after dinosaurs roamed the Earth (Pittman, 2004).
Some research has reported finding insects fossilized in amber, containing species such as a termite (30 million years ago), and a weevil from approximately 130 million years ago. These are extraordinary findings, but of course disputed. ...
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... but there can still be the possibility of contamination.
Although we can only do so much with DNA and protein fragments, they are still discoveries, which are going against previous intuitions. Again, no cloning of dinosaurs are going to take place any time soon, but DNA may help to link dinosaurs with other species around today. These two articles, the research article and the review article show strong evidence that preserved proteins, including DNA can survive under the perfect circumstances. Of course more research will need to be done, and hopefully more findings will conclude the same results.
References
Pittman, S.D. 2004. Fossilized DNA.
http://www.naturalselection.0catch.com/Files/fossilizeddna.html. Received April 3rd, 2004
Woodward, S.R., Weyand, N.J., Burnell, M. 1994. DNA sequence from cretaceous
Period. Science, v266. pp 1229.
Jurassic park is a novel presented about a group of scientists who visited an island and they were able to gather leftovers of DNA from an insect that was well kept in amber. The fossil DNA was “cloned” into selected amphibian DNA, and presto, replicated fossils were rejuvenated out of destruction on the island. Jurassic Park was printed in 1990, amid the passion of the information period when apparently the entire world was rapidly concerned with mechanizing. Corporations and entities wanted to mechanize their lives and jobs, although occasionally on a considerably smaller scale than that of Hammond's Park. This happened just a decade before the foretold ‘Turn of the Millennium’ super-computermal function that had computer mechanics and Information Technology specialists across the sphere revitalizing for disaster.
According to Radelet & Borg (2000), deterrence was, in the past, the most frequently-cited reason for arguments in support of the death penalty. The claim stems from a belief that potential criminals will be less likely to commit severe acts of violence if they know that those who carried out similar crimes before them were put to death – in much the same way that heads on pikes at the gates of a city were intended to deter criminal activity in the Middle Ages. Recently, however, many studies have concluded that the death penalty offers no significant deterrent effects, and the few which claim to find support for these effects have received substantial criticism (Radelet & Borg, 2000). The majority of both criminologists and law enforcement officers surveyed expressed that they do not believe the death penalty offers any difference in the amount of violent crimes committed (Radelet & Borg, 2000).
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Narration: Opponents of the death penalty believe it is an ineffective way to stop crime and that there are better ways to punish crime and keep society safe.
contains mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), completely intact. Mitochondrial DNA is tougher than the DNA found in cell nuclei; it is also found in the cytoplasm of a fertilized egg and is passed only through maternal lineage. This makes it much easier for the team to study and makes testing more accurate. Paabo’s team, from Leipzig, Germany, used a method of amino acid content as a way of measuring extractible DNA from the bones. The amino acid method was a means for testing the DNA content in the fossils.... ...
Jurassic Park is a book about the cloning of dinosaurs and they are used as the park entertainment on an island. In this park where dinosaurs are the attraction, not every thing will go as planed. Reading this book will teach someone how Michael Crichton feels about biological science and the cloning of extinct animals. There are things that caused the park to be unsuccessful. Dr. Malcom and Dennis Nedry where two of the parks problems, and the other was the nature of the animals.
Capital punishment has been a part of public debate in the United States for as long as I can remember. Proponents say it prevents crime; opponents claim it is cruel and unusual punishment. Social science has been unable to either conclusively support or disprove the theory that capital punishment deters crime (Schonebaum, 2002), mirroring the mixed emotions of many Americans on the subject. Historically, execution has been a significant form of punishment for deviance from social norms and for criminal behavior. (Schaefer, 2009, p. 175) The most powerful argument for the deterrent effect of the death penalty comes from the commonsense notion that people fear death more than life in prison.
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As justification for capital punishment, deterrence is used to suggest that executing murderers will decrease the homicide rate by causing other potential murderers not to commit murder from fear of being executed themselves and obviously the murderer who is executed will not kill again. This position may seem initially correct, and indeed, in a USA Today Poll, 68% of respondents agreed that the death penalty is an effective deterrence for crimes. However, some research suggests that rather than deterring homicide, state executions actually may cause an increase in the number of homicides (Stack, 1990). This phenomenon has been called the "brutalization hypothesis" and it suggests that through proposition, modeling, or by legitimizing killing, the death penalty actually causes an increase in homicides. Thus, the brutalization hypothesis is a reason for opposing the death penalty.
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“Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of Dinosaurs” is written by Stephen Jay Gould, professor of geology and zoology at Harvard. This essay is one of more than a hundred articles on evolution, zoology, and paleontology published by Gould in national magazines and journals. It tells about scientific proposals for the extinction of dinosaurs – a confusing but an exciting problem that humanity tries to solve. By analyzing and describing each of the claims for the reptiles’ demise – sex, drugs, and disasters – Gould differentiates bad science from good science and explains what makes some theories silly speculations, while the other, a testable hypothesis.
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