Question: Can you create mythological creatures through genetic engineering?

Hannah Farley answered on 3 Jun 2018:

Okay, so that would be a lot of edits (e.g. dragons are quite different from anything we currently have in existence). Most of genetic editing is altering genes that already exist, e.g. the gene for hair colour, or copying a gene from one species into another species. Lots of mythical traits don’t exist in a form we know about, so you would struggle to find anywhere to copy your mythical genes, for example your gene for fire breathing. I think maybe something like unicorns would be more achievable if you were just making something that *looks* like a unicorn, so it doesn’t have magical blood etc. That’s because there are animals that have horns, so they would have genes that code for horns, and also we have horses. So theoretically you could copy the horn gene and paste it into a horse genome (i.e. the complete genetic map).

BUT there are quite a few caveats. Horses and rhinos are quite different, so you would need to make sure that the rhino gene works well in a horse (like, it might make the horses sick or in pain). Also, there are actually lots of genes that are involved in making horns. You would need to change a lot of parts of genes, and even making one edit takes a long time (making one edit in a mouse takes 6-9 months if you’re lucky). So there are a lot of hurdles. I think the main issue would still be finding genes to use as templates. Also, you should really think about whether this is good for the creatures. What if it’s really painful for a horse to grow a unicorn horn and you wind up making really ill horse mutants in a lot of pain?