Do you have
The fleetness of a deer?
The courage of a lion?
The ferocity of a wolf?
The appetite of a pig?
The loyalty of a dog?
The endurance of a horse?

Maybe you do!

An article in this week’s economist, printed below, describes a recent scientific finding that critical genes have jumped from one species to another. The hypothesized mechanism is inter –species partial fertilization, in which exposure of the fertilized eggs from one species to the sperm of another results, not in full fusion of the sperm and zygote, but only in the transfer of a few genes.

The authors of the study assert that this can happen in the ocean because fish eggs are fertilized externally. Apparently they did not conceive of any mechanism whereby such transfer could occur in species that are fertilized internally. But there is an obvious one: inter-species sex.

If the reported results are true, then inter-species sex may play a critical role in evolution. And this in turn may explain why there is so much of it. (See, e.g., Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity by Bruce Bagemihl for a review of scientific documentation of animal homosexuality, masturbation, and interspecies sex).

And this in turn suggests, though of course it does not prove, that bestiality may have played a role in human evolution.

Serpentdove


A cold fish
Jul 10th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Fish species swap genes in a way that looks a bit like genetic engineering


SOME fish have special proteins in their blood to stop them from freezing to death—a remarkable evolutionary trait made no less so by the fact that biologists have known about it for some time. How this trait spread, though, turns out to be even more remarkable. If Peter Davies of Queen’s University in Ontario and his colleagues are right, it demonstrates in fish an evolutionary mechanism hitherto seen mainly in bacteria, viruses and genetic-engineering laboratories.

As sea-ice develops, the briny water beneath it cools to -2°C. Whales, seals and penguins cope with the consequent danger of freezing up by burning vast amounts of food to keep their bodies warm and by insulating themselves with thick layers of fat. Fish, however, are not warm blooded, and are usually too small to support substantial fat layers, so they have found a different way round the problem. Many species that live in cold waters have special proteins in their blood which attach themselves to small crystals of ice and prevent these from growing to a size at which they would be dangerous.

Normally, such an advantageous trait would start as a chance mutation that gave its possessor an advantage in the struggle for life. The mutant’s descendants would first take over their own species. Then, as that species diversified to occupy new ecological niches with the assistance of the mutation in question, it would come to be found in a group of species that had a common ancestor. At the same time, the mutant gene would undergo its own process of evolutionary refinement, and would end up slightly different in each of the daughter species. In animals, at least, this is the way evolution normally proceeds.

As Dr Davies reports in the Public Library of Science, however, that is not what seems to have happened with at least one piscine antifreeze gene. He and his colleagues analysed the antifreeze of diverse species and found that three—herring, smelt and sea raven—have nearly identical antifreeze proteins, even though they do not share a recent common ancestor. The chance of such similar proteins emerging in unrelated species is so vanishingly small that the team propose another option. They think the genes for antifreeze proteins jumped from one species to another.

If fish were bacteria, this would not be an outrageous suggestion. Bacteria (and viruses) regularly swap DNA. Viruses also, though more rarely, swap DNA with animals. But animals swapping DNA directly with one another is previously unheard of.

Dr Davies suggests that it may have happened here because fish have external fertilisation. In other words, males squirt sperm over eggs that have already been laid. That process allows sperm to go astray and, potentially, to end up attached to the wrong egg.

If a stray sperm actually fertilised the wrong egg, the result would be a hybrid that would almost certainly die. But if the egg were already fertilised then perhaps a lesser form of gene transfer might happen, with only a small amount of the foreign DNA being incorporated into the new creature. In this case, an advantageous gene transfer might be preserved.

Given the number of ice ages over the past 20m years, an antifreeze gene would be of great advantage. But exactly how common such “horizontal” gene transfer is in fish remains to be seen. Until this piece of work was done, it was thought impossible, so no one has looked. Now they will start doing so. And, if you want to find something, there is nothing like looking.

See: Citation: Graham LA, Lougheed SC, Ewart KV, Davies PL (2008) Lateral Transfer of a Lectin-Like Antifreeze Protein Gene in Fishes. PLoS ONE 3(7): e2616. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002616

moved to zoo

Complex animals swap dna all the time. Swapping via viri really doesn't happen. True there is swapping out of dna or rna for the replication of the virus. But this viral swap out does not express itself in the individual as new dna specific traits. In short, naturally speaking, your dna patterns are fixed at the time egg fuses with sperm. Viri swap out genetic material to make new virus babies. But in 'giving birth' to these little monsters the virus that was infected is destroyed. You do also sometimes get 'new' dna through pure mutation or more commonly through replication errors during cell replication. But again these kinds of changes typically are harmful.

interesting...

so, when I find a girl, I just need to have her fuck a tiger before I go at her, and maybe our kid will grow claws, ears, and a tail :lol:

If only... Do you realize how much money you could make if you discovered a way to create real 'cat people'?

Cstek, that's pretty much correct actually. ^_^ Also coincedentally its the same method I use myself. Good luck beating me and my offspring to the front pages! :P

Wow, this is an interesting concept! We all know it is impossible to produce offspring with other animals, but perhaps we can pass on DNA. Could a guy have sex with a bitch, and then she mates with a dog, and then the puppies have human DNA and be slightly more like us...Maybe we could create real furries. That would be pretty sweet! :w00t: :thinking:

Haha, me and my dog people will have taken over the world by that time. :lol:

lol. Definitely interesting article there. While it would be really awesome to be able to do something like that. Most likely nothing of the sort would happen. There many many many genes in your DNA, many of them active, even more that are considered inactive. If there were such a transfer in genes, the likeliness of that extra gene showing up in a physical form is very very slim. But such a gene, depending on what it was for, could still be beneficial or harmful. But it is possible to show up in a physical form. Its just not likely to be anything large or noticeable at all. But it would be interesting to see that happen! :)

Seconded all the above - This article is very intriguing; knowing that our animal friends aren't -directly- impregnated by us, but it's a form of evolution...

Hm... This really leaves you thinking, doesn't it?

-_-
I would like to remind members of the board, that the idea of DNA mixing was long long ago, when "cross polenating" was still a bit possible!
:thinking:
himfella
:devil2:

Hmm... interesting article, although if you were really going to create, furry people, i bet it would take alot of centuries trying to pass animals genes into humans genes, before something seriously noticeable occurred.

Cats rule, dogs drool! :lol:

It would take quite a long time of constant, intentional cross mating. You'd really need some kind of company working on it for anything to be done correctly.

And even if it is possible, it'd never show up in any of our lifetimes, which defeats the purpose for me. What good are cat-anthros six hundred years from now if I wont be alive? I cant have my way with them then!

well the sooner we start cross-breeding, the sooner the cat-people...I mean dog people will exist. :lol:

^ Seconded. :D

I'm not sure I want 'antifreeze blood'. I would rather move to a warmer climate. Heehee.

Absolutely! It's our duty to the human species to do all we can toward this noble effort!


P.S. Seen any Horsecows lately?
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