In a sense, you aren't wrong. Evolution is mutations + natural selection. Most don't, but if this one conferred a reproductive advantage, you could get a burgeoning population of quadruped chickens.
I wonder what kind of things we could make if we were really, really trying. I get the ethical issues but, like, find the gene on this guy that’s mutated, do it to thousands of chicks, pick the functional ones, breed them, etc. I would pay quite a lot for a pet griffin, even if it was chicken sized
Actual survival of the fittest. If there were an abundance of food that a four legged chicken could eat in the wild, that it couldn’t access with only its shitty 2 feet, the chicken with 4 feet survives/thrives has more mates and potentially passes on its deformed 4 chicken footed genes.
For breeding it depends how dominant the gene(s) with the relevant mutation(s) is/are, with genetic engineering so long as they can locate the source, the world is their oyster/buffet.
If its a recessive gene, it would be a little difficult to build a population of 4 legged chickens without incest. Luckily, I'd imagine chickens are easy to breed since they lay an egg a day.
Not a chicken breeder btw
But basically, hed have to breed the four legged chicken with lets say 32 other chickens to get a decent amount of genetic diversity. All of the chickens within this second generation would be carriers of the 4 leg gene (it wouldnt be expressed though) and would need to be bred together. One in four of the chickens of the third generation would be 4 legged, meaning there would be about 4 of them. Those can be bred together.
There is no sibling incest in this case.
Also it should be noted that genetics arent this simple. It could easily be a combination of genes that arent on the same pair of chromosomes, meaning the chicken might only be able to pass off half of the four leg genes to each kid which would make it incredibly difficult to breed without identifying the genes.
I'm mainly asking for potential Jurassic Park reasons in the future. I also saw they used CRISPER or something like that to make a baby chicken with a mouth and teeth rather than a beak. I don't know much about this type of stuff I just want to see a dinosaur before I die lol a small dream.
Use hormones for size growth, several generations later you can probably ride you chicken to work, provided the planet doesn't die first from our other actions
I don't think hormone exposure even during natal development makes the epigenetic changes necessary to propogate those changes generationally. Better to fiddle with myostatin genetically really, you can edit the germline cells.
Yeah, you might be right, I don't have all the knowledge on genetic engineering, or that much biology experience, mostly just from what I had in high school. I still do like the idea of riding chickens like horses though
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u/Walouisi Jul 21 '21
In a sense, you aren't wrong. Evolution is mutations + natural selection. Most don't, but if this one conferred a reproductive advantage, you could get a burgeoning population of quadruped chickens.