Resurrection

The golden era of molecular biology has paved the way for us now to tweak, fix, engineer, or even entirely synthesize genomes at levels and scales never seen before. Sequencing technologies continue to improve at exponential rates and have yielded powerful new insights into organisms of the distant past, as well as those that co-inhabit the planet with us. The era of genomics has ushered in the ability to reconstruct life as it evolved on Earth and provide perspectives into how evolution will likely shape it for decades to come. Efforts to revive animals long extinct are clearly beyond the realms of science fiction—humans have the power like never before to create, change, or destroy life forms beyond their own kind. One cannot think about this further without first conjuring the mind-boggling and yet fascinating premise of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. Capturing the amazement of audiences worldwide nearly 22 years ago, the books and movie franchises provided what could be best described as a perfect confluence of past, present, and future. The latest installment of this series, Jurassic World, continues to take the world by storm and revisit themes that are quite familiar to today’s scientists—cloning, genetic engineering, ethics, extinction of species, and the role of man in interfering with the environment.