Evolutionary Biology-inspired Sciku

Hello, Dolly

A thank-you letter from the future

Photo by Andrea Lightfoot on Unsplash

the climate heats up
new virus — can we adapt?
herd immunity

Hello, I’m speaking to you from the year 2169, when your future people –– we call ourselves Fumans, sounds like “few mens” because we’re few and far between –– don’t look quite the same as you do. We all have the exact same skin color, for one thing.

We just want to thank you, our honored ancestors, for finally taking the bold and difficult actions that rescued humanity, in the nick of time, against impossible odds, from certain extinction. Here’s what happened (in the past for us, some yet to occur for you Humans):

• In 1997, Dolly, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell, came into the world, an exact copy of the sheep that donated that now-famous cell. Other mammals had previously been cloned from embryonic cells, but what made Dolly so special was that she had been made from an adult cell, which no one at the time thought was possible—a major scientific achievement. Cloning had a huge impact on science, but a lesser impact on human life, at first.
• Recombinant DNA and genetic engineering research (GMO crops and designer babies): In other labs around the…