Re: Dinochicken meeting proposal

Thank you Jack! I will pass this along to Jeffrey. Take care, Lesley

On Sep 10, 2012, at 3:00 PM, Jack Homer wrote:

Hi Jeffrey, I've conducted the Doodle Poll and everyone is interested in getting together sooner rather than later, so we arc looking at October 24-25. I'm wondering if you would be able to help with funding this "Dinochicken Summit" and what you would need from me. Also would very much like for you to be here if its at all possible, as you could then see what all is known and what is not. All the best,

Jack

On Sep 1, 2012, at 11:13 AM, ████████ wrote:

You as well

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 1, 2012, at 12:53 PM, Jack Horner <██████████████> wrote:

Thanks ████ much appreciated!
Have a great weekend!

Jack

On Sep 1, 2012, at 10:38 AM, Lesley Groff wrote:

Thank you!! Passing this on to Jeffrey.

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 1, 2012, at 12:18 PM, Jack Horner <████████████████████████████>
wrote:

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Dear Jeffrey,

First off, many thanks for the invitation to your ranch, I had a great time, especially spending time with you and the girls, and seeing your Cretaceous sediments and the old railroad. I don't get many chances to spend time with non paleontologists or see places and things like that these days.

I talked to my post does and Co - PI when I returned and got the scoop on the transgenic chickens situation, for as you know I was very surprised to hear that such a thing existed since my co-researchers were saying they didn't. As it turns out, although there are such a thing, there is simply no established protocol to create them, and they, at present do not pass on their characteristics, so in effect are useless for our project. What it is that we need to do is to be able to target a specific region of DNA, and that technology is not yet available in birds, but is expected within a year or two, so within our time frame. We hope someone else will do it first so we can use it, as this technology (homologous recombination technology, aka knockout technology) is essential to the success of this project. We do not aim to generate chickens that express an extraneous gene (a transgene), but we plan on finding the very small changes in the regulation of existing genes

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that curb tail, hand, and tooth
development. In order to make
these very small changes in the
chicken genome, homologous
recombination technology needs
to be developed.

Anyway, this is the sort of stuff we will discuss in our summit meeting, and I very much appreciate your considering the funding of this meeting. It is obviously the most important first step, and I thank you for suggesting we do it.

Please give all the girls my very best wishes, and to you, whom I envy,

Thanks again,

Jack

9.1.12

Proposal Attached and Separate
(attachment)

THE DINOCHICKEN PROJECT `SUMMIT' MEETING
PROPOSAL

The overall goals of the Dinochicken Project' are to reverse engineer' an avian dinosaur (in this case, a chicken or quail) to

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have morphological
characteristics of a non-avian
dinosaur. In its purest form, the
project entails reactivating
dormant or latent genetic
pathways that would generate
atavistic characters. The
characters to be modified
initially are those identified
previously as key differences
between avian and non-avian
dinosaurs: presence of teeth,
hands/claws instead of wings,
and a long true tail.

A key component to any project is identifying what is already
known and establishing
connections with other scientists
who may have relevant
information already in hand.
There are 6 PIs who will make
the research decisions, and
another 11 people who we
know have expertise, and are
interested in participating. The
current, unpublished knowledge
of these other researchers would
definitely help to decide the
research directions of the
various PI lead teams.

I am proposing to bring 12 people to Montana for the two day `summit' and we have another 5 that live here, so the meeting will include 17 research scientists plus a couple of MSU

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graduate students who would
help with logistics. The summit
meeting would be held at the
Museum of the Rockies,

Montana State University.

Participants arc currently
working on Doodle.com to
determine a meeting time prior
to the end of 2012. The link is
attached in the event that you
could attend:

http://doodle.com/eg2xvmvx8 u3t9fxs

Summit Meeting Proposed Participants

Montana State University

Jack Homer Lead PI (Paleontologist)

Christa Merzdorf Co PI (Developmental geneticist) (tail
development)

Anne Blackwell Post-Doc (Developmental geneticist) (tail
development)

Dana Rashid Post-Doc (Developmental geneticist) (tail
regeneration)

Dan Post-Doc (Developmental geneticist)

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*Two Graduate Student Assistants
&n

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