this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] kryptonidas@lemmings.world 8 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

What does that even mean, you have like “four letters” and dna strands of millions long. Like how selective do you have to be. I’m sure you can basically write anything that way.

Are there entire chunks that are inactive that would give feathers, that at some point gave feathers to our ancestors?

[–] Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 2 weeks ago

All things DNA is full of code that doesn't get activated and is just passed on anyways

Gene expression is what they mean by "activated"

Basically think of it like having a library of instruction books and only grabbing a few of them to do the project that needs done.

[–] flora_explora@beehaw.org 2 points 2 weeks ago

I agree, this seems pretty misleading. And are there any other feathered animals other than on the dinosaur branch? Because if not, how should the feather DNA even end up in mammalian DNA?? Or maybe feathers are produced by very common differently used genes? But in this case this would be even more nonsensical...

[–] psud@aussie.zone 2 points 2 weeks ago

I recall that scientists reactivated chicken genes for teeth and grew a toothed chook