Creating an organism without evolution in a lab environment

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.

posted almost 8 years ago

Zxyrra‭

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