[GR4V3mind117]

Ok so one of my buddies told me that if you can extract the genes of an animal such as a bird and inject it into a human bloodstream, the subject would slowly grow wings and gain flight abilities.

Would this be possible?

[Box Cat]

Your friend is an idiot and obviously has no idea what he's talking about.

[R0FLninja]

Originally Posted by Greatjedi7

Ok so one of my buddies told me that if you can extract the genes of an animal such as a bird and inject it into a human bloodstream, the subject would slowly grow wings and gain flight abilities.

Would this be possible?

Yeahhh, the bolded section is impossible and idiotic. But it may gain some birdlike characteristics involving immunity to certain deseases that normal humans would fall victim to. But overall, I doubt anything would happen, besides possibly getting an infection from having birdy stuff in your bloodstream.

I dont know, Im a noob. :P

But I bet you'd get a better answer by googling your question.

[Thorax tehGREAT]

That has to be one of the stupidest things I've heard of you should smack your friend across the face next time you see him.
1)Simply injecting genes into you would do nothing.
2)Your body would treat it as foreign and proceed to kill it
3)He obviously has no idea how genes and DNA work.

[Insane54]

Methinks someone's seem a little too many movies ;)

[Security77]

Maybe, just maybe, if you crack open bird eggs and inject the insides into your bloodstream.....you'll die.

[RedNeck]

Well, don't be to quick to shoot em down guys. Injecting said gene into an embrionic cell would have this effect. It has been proven with fireflies and bunnies. The bunny glows. I sorry if you don't believe me but it was on the news like two years ago.

[Thorax tehGREAT]

Originally Posted by RedNeck

Well, don't be to quick to shoot em down guys. Injecting said gene into an embrionic cell would have this effect. It has been proven with fireflies and bunnies. The bunny glows. I sorry if you don't believe me but it was on the news like two years ago.

Yes thats called genetic engeneering but I think more along the lines of if you take a bird stab a syringe into it draw its blood and inject yourself with it you magically sprout wings and fly.

[Ladnil]

Originally Posted by Thorax tehGREAT

That has to be one of the stupidest things I've heard of you should smack your friend across the face next time you see him.
1)Simply injecting genes into you would do nothing.
2)Your body would treat it as foreign and proceed to kill it
3)He obviously has no idea how genes and DNA work.

This. Genetic engineering is possible and is done frequently to plants, and things like gene therapy to correct single enzymes or proteins have been done in humans, but nothing as drastic as growing wings is even close to possible(yet).

Originally Posted by RedNeck

Well, don't be to quick to shoot em down guys. Injecting said gene into an embrionic cell would have this effect. It has been proven with fireflies and bunnies. The bunny glows. I sorry if you don't believe me but it was on the news like two years ago.

That was a jellyfish gene, but yea, that is genetic engineering and it is completely possible.

Food for thought: one of my biology textbooks years ago mentioned genetic engineering, and as one of the potential possibilities for human modification mentioned in it was green skin that performs photosynthesis. Take the gene for chlorophyll from a plant, and use it to replace the gene for human skin pigment(melanin). Now, it isn't as easy as that because our cells don't have the support structures to make photosynthetic skin possible, but as an extreme form of genetic engineering, something along those lines might happen in animal trials in our lifetime.

[Rook]

Your friend does meth, it is only proven in animal studies with embrios to work, once your body has developed and all the cell know what they should be it won't work, and wing may be possible but flight most likely not seeing as he would also need the gene for extremely light bones, which in turn would make them a very fragile person that literally in old age would break every bone in their body.