Board Thread:Fossil Fuels/@comment-3213993-20150316033235

The genetic mutation that allows chicken embryos to grow teeth has been identified. It is a mutation of the ciliary protein gene C2CD3. It consists of a 19 base pair deletion and a premature stop codon.

This might provide the clue to allow chickenosaur embryos to hatch. Talpid2 kills chicken embryos, and thus by default hatching a live chickenosaur with this gene is not possible. Altering this gene might allow scientists to alter the expression. It may be that we can alter the gene to allow tooth expression without the other deformities that kill the embryo.

This won't be an issue for Horner, as he just wants to alter embryonic development rather than modifying the genome. Thus, he can inject the protein into the chicken. However, this won't be inheritable. If one wants to make breeding chickenosaurus, it will require making talpid2 non-lethal. An alternative is to use transgenics from toothed animals, but this may require identifying many tooth genes, as traits are often coded by more than one gene. 