Genetically Engineered Snakes

Here's the only hang-up I have with the 'ick' argument.

Imagine a world where all the various domestic dog breeds had never come to exist. There's just the wild wolf. A scientist gets some wolves, does some genetic modifications and produces some chihuahua, pug, and greyhound puppies. I'm betting that there'd be a huge backlash, people would say the scientists are playing god, messing around with natural things that they have no business going near.

Well, it didn't happen that way. We've produced the same thing, but over thousands of years of selective breeding. How is what the imaginary scientists did any less ethical?

I'd say that if captive breeders really focused on it, we might be able to produce blue/red ball pythons through selective breeding in a few hundred generations, using mutations that nature produces at random. I personally don't see any harm in pulling it off in a little less time. Genetic engineering might even be able to produce some less conspicuously modified pet snakes, such as ones that never go off the feed, or are immune to IBD, or produce hardier eggs.

Ash I do agree with you -- although I tell you what, I've met a lot of people lately who I honestly think believe that the "meddling" that was done 1000's of years ago to create our domestic animal breeds was somehow morally wrong ... :confused:

Although, the one problem I do have with this theoretical idea -- and one of the things that I think makes selective breeding so darn cool -- is that at this point, ALL of the genetic engineering that is currently being done is that of the "cut and paste" variety. We know how to manipulate genetic code -- we can take swatches of code that we know, through trial and error, to be genes that code for certain proteins -- but we don't know how to read or write it. And my gosh, how can we be expected to when there is SO much more to genetics than the simple central dogma (DNA --> RNA --> protein)!

So right now, all we can really do is stick genes into the genome to get proteins that we want (like green fluorescence protein, etc.) or knock out existing known genes. We can probably do a bit more, heck, maybe a LOT more (things change every year and my last GOOD biotech class was a few years ago, ha!), but there's still so much we don't know that we can't predict with total accuracy what exactly our "meddling" is going to do. For example, we might stick a gene for blue pigment into the snake genome hoping it gets expressed in the melanocytes, but instead it gets expressed in the neuron, interacts with some key process and makes the snakes loopy.

So, while I don't think it's morally wrong per se, I do think there's a lot we don't know right now and to go sticking genes in for purely cosmetic reasons when we're still at such a rudimentary level of understanding is questionable, IMO. (Though if they're already there for research purposes -- like GFP axolotls and mice -- I don't mind owning them :) )

All of this being a totally hypothetical discussion, of course, unless someone feels like bankrolling my glow-in-the-dark leucistic project. :8:

Hmm ... I just said completely the opposite thing in this post than in my first post, didn't I? Oh well sorry about that.