current community

your communities

more stack exchange communities

company blog
Stack Exchange Inbox Reputation and Badges
tour help
up vote 4 down vote favorite

It's hard to create a new animal from scratch.

  • If you genetically modify an existing species until it becomes a drastically different species, then implant the fertilized embryo in a female of the original species, the offspring will not survive birth. This means you can't make drastic genetic changes the traditional way - it will kill the animals before they're even born.

  • Naturally evolving a new, complex organism can take billions of years, and I don't have that time

Therefore, some other, method must be employed to physically construct the first organism, or kick off the lineage, off a completely unique, lab-made species.

Assume scientists have already decided on the genes this species will possess, and rightfully deemed it fit to survive in the wild - if the first mother of the species could only be born. It's multi-cellular, and will not give birth until a minimum of 20 years into its life.

How do you physically create the first individual of a unique species?

My thoughts so far

  • A base species could be modified, a few genes at a time, every generation, until the new species' genome could be implanted via embryo and survive birth. I'm not too fond of this approach because it involves a lot of waiting (hundreds of generations).
  • A machine could act as an artificial uterus for the first individual(s) of the species. Starting with a single embryo, it could feed in nutrients and maintain the desired conditions. However, accurately creating so many tissues and organs in an artificial environment seems difficult to me.
share|improve this question
    
Note that scientists use the first method on a regular basis for simple multicellular species: some animals (e.g. flies) have a very short lifespan, so a hundred generations is actually shorter than a human pregnancy. – Taladris 4 hours ago
    
@Taladris I'll edit the question to clarify that the lifespan is longer and the species is more complex, otherwise I would consider that – Zxyrra 4 hours ago
up vote 4 down vote

You only need four things:

  1. Immune system compatibility. This is trivial. In lab you can just keep mother on immunosuppresants. Done.

  2. Compatible size and pregnancy time.. Again, this is easy, as you would probably use species of similar birth size & time in the first place.

  3. Good proportion of substances in umbilical cord. This can be fixed by IV if needed.

  4. Implantation of the egg. This is a tricky part. You need to be careful when setting up genes for this process. Preferably rip them whole from mother 0 species and call it a day.

Alternatively, go with eggs. If your organism does not need to give live birth, it would not need a mother. This is a route I'd prefer.

Probably there is more to it, but our science is at single cell synthetic life now, and we are yet to see what will happen.

share|improve this answer
    
Won't keeping the mother on immunosuppresants endanger the fetus? Something tells me that would cause problems, as much as I'd like to do so – Zxyrra 4 hours ago
1  
@Zxyrra it would hurt immune system of first generation. So what? Third one will have no trace of this effect. – Mołot 4 hours ago
up vote 3 down vote

You Don't Need A Living Creature

In your question, you said that you are at the technological level where you can genetically engineer a new species. So this is obviously a high level of technological advancement compared to now. So if you have that technology, then why don't you have others?

First you need a container filled with lab-made embryonic fluid. Keep that at the appropriate temperature. Then provide a facsimile of the mother's womb, and connect that to a source of nutrients.

I'm sure if your society can create a new species through genetic manipulation, then you can make a "pod" for it to grow in. There is much less risk, much simpler. You may also be able to re-use most things in this method for the first of the other gender.

share|improve this answer
    
I disagree with the "why don't you have others?" statement. We practically can engineer new species with modern gene-editing, and we've come close to making fully synthetic bacteria in the past. Yet artificial wombs still seem to be science-fiction. – Zxyrra 1 hour ago
    
@Zxyrra While that is true, we have come nowhere near the ability to genetically change a creature to a new, distinct species. It's like changing a poodle to a Chihuahua as opposed to changing an alligator to a platypus. And what we've done is nowhere near even that, it is just bacteria. – Xandar The Zenon 1 hour ago
    
Agreed. Artificial wombs are plausible to expect by the time "we" can engineer a new complex species. They'd likely be developed to support practical experimentation with modifying existing species once it becomes an economically attractive endeavor done large scale. – user2338816 48 mins ago

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.