Scientists are growing T. rex leather in a lab. It could be used to make purses.
Scientists are growing T. rex leather in a lab. It could be used to make purses. Scientists say they want to create design durable and sustainable high-end accessories made with artificial dinosaur leather. They got the genetic building blocks from Tyrannosaurus rex fossils.
Show Caption
Hide Caption
Fossilized dinosaur footprints found on boulder
An Australian researcher discovered dozens of three-toed dinosaur footprints on a boulder in Callide Basin.
The next time you go shopping for a new purse, your choices could go beyond traditional materials such as leather, nylon, cotton and polyester to include … Tyrannosaurus rex skin?
Yes, the remnants of the prehistoric predator are being used to create synthetic T. rex leather, which can be turned into accessories including purses. That's the plan for a trio of companies – The Organoid Company, Lab-Grown Leather Ltd., and VML – working on "a high-quality alternative to traditional leather that's cruelty-free and eco-friendly," said the collaborators in an April 25 news release.
The goal of a "luxury fashion item," hitting later this year, would be the first example of leather developed from an extinct species, the companies said.
"With T-Rex leather we're harnessing the biology of the past to create the luxury materials of the future," said Bas Korsten, global chief creative officer, Innovation & CCO EMEA at VML, the agency behind the 2024 Super Bowl "Mayo Cat" campaign and 2023's Mammoth Meatball, made of lab-grown meat.
Cosmos 482: Here's when the Soviet-era spacecraft may return to Earth
The team at The Organoid Company, a Netherlands-based biotech, will use fragments of T-Rex collagen protein recovered from fossils to recreate the prehistoric protein and engineer the new DNA into specialized cells for leather production. Another biotech company, the U.K.-based Lab-Grown Leather Ltd., will then use those specialized cells to produce skin, made with the T-Rex collagen protein, which is then tanned to form T-Rex leather.
"This project is a remarkable example of how we can harness cutting-edge genome and protein engineering to create entirely new materials," said The Organoid Company CEO Thomas Mitchell.
T. Rex leather could serve as a more environmentally friendly option to traditional leather and also eliminate "animal cruelty concerns," the companies said.
But some detractors consider the project misleading. University of Maryland vertebrate paleontologist Thomas Holtz, Jr. pointed out to Live Science, a science news site, how the lab-created skin won't be authentic because there's no actual T. rex skin or DNA to serve as a basis. "What this company is doing seems to be fantasy," he said.
Calling the announcement a "gimmick," Tom Ellis, professor of synthetic genome engineering at Imperial College London, told NBC News, 'I doubt that our knowledge of dinosaur evolution is good enough to be able to design a collagen gene specifically from T. rex."
But researchers have found collagen in an 80-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex fossil and that can be used as a template, they say.
The Organoid Company is creating a T-Rex protein by using fragments of the T-Rex collagen protein from fossils, the companies said in a statement to USA TODAY.
"An important distinction is that (the companies) are starting with the language of proteins, amino acids, rather than the DNA itself," according to the statement. "This encodes what the 3D structure looks like and from this they can then recreate or 'molecularly resurrect' the DNA which is put into special cell lines for leather production."
The result of this reconstruction of ancient protein sequences is T. Rex leather, which is structurally identical to T. rex skin. "A biomaterial inspired by prehistoric biology," Mitchell said.
Eventually, T. rex leather could be used beyond handbags and clutches to cover chairs and vehicle seats. "The production of T-Rex leather demonstrates VML's commitment to pioneering new grounds and shaping the future of our industry," Korsten said.
Mike Snider is a reporter on USA TODAY's Trending team. You can follow him on Threads, Bluesky, X and email him at mikegsnider & @mikegsnider.bsky.social & @mikesnider & msnider@usatoday.com
What's everyone talking about? Sign up for our trending newsletter to get the latest news of the day
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Medscape
15 hours ago
- Medscape
The Nitty and Very Gritty of Wastewater Disease Monitoring
It didn't smell as bad as I thought it would. Sort of like going-bad ocean water but without the salt. It doesn't look as nasty as I thought, either, but it's important to maintain a sense of professional clinical distance even though I'm seeing and smelling the sewage of half a million people. Here's how this works: Every night in Chester, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb, an operator dons a white hard hat, heads outside, climbs a flight of metal stairs, and walks across a bridge above a tank of dirty, gurgling water. They enter a small shed-like structure and retrieve a large plastic jug from a refrigerated cabinet. The jug is filled with sandy brown untreated wastewater freckled with tiny, dark brown lumps that sink to the bottom. Wastewater flows toward treatment tanks at a facility near Philadelphia The wastewater flowing into this facility goes through a series of carefully coordinated steps — grit removal and primary settling, microbial digestion, clarification, disinfection — to transform it into clean water. How clean? Well, by the time it reaches its ultimate destination, the nearby Delaware River, this water is cleaner than what's in the river already. But this particular water jug, which contains samples collected at 15-minute intervals throughout the day, is going to the plant's in-house lab. A sample of untreated water is collected from this temperature-controlled unit each day An employee will gently shake the jug, mixing the solids and liquid within, and pour off samples into two 500-mL plastic bottles. Then they will carefully package, label, and seal the bottles and ship them to WastewaterSCAN, a nationwide tracking system based at Stanford University, Stanford, California, in partnership with Emory University, Atlanta, that tests wastewater for 11 infectious disease indicators. Treated water, left, compared to untreated water, right A vial of dirty water might be one of the most important tools in modern epidemiology. One simple reason, and it echoes the title of the classic children's book: Everybody poops . Samples are prepared for shipping to WastewaterSCAN 'Wastewater is so incredibly powerful because we don't have to do anything — the default is opt in,' said Lauren Stadler, PhD, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University, Houston, and a co-lead of Houston Wastewater Epidemiology. 'We just go around our daily normal business, and everyone's contributing to this sample, and it's so unique in that way in that it represents this aggregate of everyone that's contributed to the waste stream.' The Valuable Information We Flush Down the Toilet Scientists have explored viruses in wastewater for decades, but the technology went mainstream during COVID-19. 'At the beginning of the pandemic, there was a huge effort to see if we could use wastewater to monitor SARS-CoV-2 because there was limited testing available and different test-seeking behavior and access to testing,' said Alexandria Boehm, PhD, Richard and Rhoda Goldman professor in environmental studies at Stanford University and principal investigator at WastewaterSCAN. It turned out that infected people released SARS-CoV-2 RNA into wastewater in measurable amounts. 'I think we were all really surprised that we could use wastewater to figure out trends in disease occurrence, levels of disease occurrence and also the emergence of variants,' said Boehm. 'That was a huge surprise, and something that had never been done before.' To check wastewater for disease surveillance, scientists use polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to detect and quantify RNA or DNA. That genetic material enters wastewater through our urine, feces, blood, saliva, skin cells, phlegm, anything we flush down the toilet or scrub from our bodies in the shower or sink. Viral RNA is hardy enough to withstand its miles-long journey through pipes, tumbling alongside the other muck flowing through the sewer system. 'We've rubbed some wastewater on a surface in our lab, inside of a hood, let it dry and come back 10 days later and sampled it again, and we still get a lot of SARS-CoV-2, or at least half of it, so it's pretty robust,' said Jordan Peccia, PhD, Thomas E. Golden, Jr. Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. PCR can detect a wide range of germs in wastewater. WastewaterSCAN tracks COVID-19, influenza A, influenza B, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), human metapneumovirus, enterovirus D68, norovirus, candida auris, hepatitis A, and two clades of mpox in wastewater. When the WastewaterSCAN team receives a sample from one of its nearly 150 partner sites, they remove the solids — food particles, fecal particles, and everything else we flush and forget — from the liquid. That solid sludge is where the viruses live. Next, they extract the viral nucleic acids and place them in a droplet digital PCR machine equipped with primers and probes specific to the target they're looking for. They press start, and a PCR thermocycler machine generates amplicons, or pieces of RNA, if the target is detected. The team converts the numbers into units of copies per gram solids of the wastewater and then shares the data to their online dashboard. The CDC gathers PCR testing data for COVID-19, influenza A, RSV, and mpox from 879 sites participating in its National Wastewater Surveillance System. Some states and municipalities have their own systems, too. To see which infections are rising and falling in your area, you can check the WastewaterSCAN or CDC maps, or in some communities, your local public health department's website. You'll see peaks and valleys, but these maps can't tell you how many people are infected in each place. We don't yet know how much virus in wastewater equals one infection. Such a calculation would require more data on how many viral particles the average person sheds from body fluids when they're sick — data that is surprisingly scarce. Boehm hopes future research can address these questions. 'Having information on human shedding of these viruses will actually allow us to gain more insight into maybe how many people are sick or shedding the virus,' said Boehm. 'Right now, we can only say the trend is increasing, there are more people getting sick, or levels are very high now compared to before, so there are more people sick now than before, but we can't say it seems like maybe one out of 100 people have the flu.' Still, the trends reveal a lot. A Treasure Trove of Data Here's how some healthcare providers and patients are using wastewater intel to promote public health: Aiding clinical decision-making and situational awareness. Doctors have told Boehm they find wastewater data useful for clinical decision-making. 'I've also heard people say that they call it situational awareness, as a healthcare provider or public health professional, having a sense of what is happening in the community right now, so that when people present with different symptoms, there is this background knowledge of what is circulating and what might be going on,' said Boehm. For example, say a patient presents with flu-like symptoms. If influenza levels are high, a healthcare provider might consider flu testing and prophylaxis. If flu levels are low and human metapneumovirus levels are high, they might suspect the latter virus instead. 'Although each patient individually is different, this will never replace the care that an individual patient needs, especially someone who's severely ill, but it can help with situational awareness,' said Boehm. Considering wastewater data when staffing and supplying healthcare facilities. Some hospitals adjust their schedules and supply orders when disease levels start ticking upward, said Helena M. Solo-Gabriele, PhD, a professor of engineering at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, her team shared wastewater data with a local health system to help them model staffing and supply needs. Reducing the need for routine testing during outbreaks. Solo-Gabriele's team at the University of Miami found that wastewater monitoring could help reduce the frequency of clinical testing needed to monitor the spread of COVID-19 on college campuses. 'The good thing about it is that it's one sample or a series of samples that can represent thousands of people,' said Solo-Gabriele. Wastewater sampling could be particularly valuable in detecting rising levels of infections that are often asymptomatic or stigmatized. 'Some diseases, such as monkeypox, for example, have a stigma associated with them,' said Solo-Gabrielle. 'People may intentionally not go to the doctor or may intentionally not report it for concerns of being stigmatized, and so the wastewater gets around all of those issues that rely on people being diagnosed.' Keeping schools healthy. Stadler and Houston Wastewater Epidemiology collaborate with about four dozen schools in the Houston area to monitor schools' wastewater for flu, COVID-19, RSV, and vaccine-preventable diseases like measles. 'If we have a detection of, for example, RSV or flu in the wastewater, if you're a parent who subscribes to the text alert system, you get a push notification being like, there's a there's RSV in your school — here's what you can do about it,' she said. If flu is detected multiple weeks in a row, the health department offers free, optional vaccines at the school. Parent feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Reprioritizing healthy habits. Once people know infections are increasing in their school, neighborhood or community, they might mask up or wash or sanitize their hands more often, said Solo-Gabriele. 'If we have rapid, accurate ways to know when an outbreak is going on, it can inform people for all sorts of things, from holding events for people who are immunocompromised to just thinking about being careful in your classroom if you're a teacher,' said Peccia. Monitor new (or newly resurrected) viral outbreaks. In Houston, Stadler's team has been monitoring the city's wastewater to mitigate and prepare for a potential outbreak of measles. Boehm's team is working on technology to monitor bird flu. Pinpoint hotspots before infections spread. When researchers at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) sampled wastewater from airports and other spots frequented by tourists, they found viruses early — before they showed up at the main wastewater treatment plant. 'As we increased that resolution and got closer to some of these locations, we realized that the near real-time intelligence that we could get could mirror what we were seeing at the clinical case level, and if not predict much earlier, what we were going to see at the clinical case level, and especially at the zip code level,' said Edwin Oh, PhD, a professor in the UNLV School of Medicine and College of Sciences. Tourists are good at spreading germs — so are college students. Oh's team has detected chlamydia and gonorrhea in wastewater around the UNLV campus to help the student health center prioritize where on campus to offer free testing or provide information about these diseases. 'These are such treatable conditions, and perhaps because such testing is a cost, or is a cost associated with a parent's insurance, that such diseases, such infections, will be overlooked,' he said. Wastewater can provide intelligence and encourage service in areas that need it most, he said. The goal isn't to police behavior — it's to share information and provide choices. Wastewater data isn't traceable to individuals. The Future of Wastewater Monitoring Researchers are working on ways to extract even more useful information from wastewater. Someday, the benefits could extend to:
New York Times
a day ago
- New York Times
MRNA, Used in Covid Shots, May Help Rid the Body of H.I.V.
The technology that powered Covid vaccines may also lead scientists to a cure for H.I.V. Using mRNA, Australian researchers said they were able to trick the virus to come out of hiding, a crucial step in ridding the body of it entirely. The research, published last week in Nature Communications, is still preliminary, and so far, has been shown to be successful only in a lab. But it suggests that mRNA has potential far beyond its use in vaccines as a means to deliver therapies against stubborn adversaries. Short for messenger RNA, mRNA is a set of instructions for a gene. In the case of Covid vaccines, the instructions were for a piece of the coronavirus. In the new study, they are for molecules key to targeting H.I.V. 'mRNA is just this miraculous — I really do think miraculous — tool to deliver things that you want into places that were not possible before,' said Dr. Sharon Lewin, director of the Cumming Global Center for Pandemic Therapeutics in Melbourne, who led the study. Vaccines deploying mRNA instruct the body to produce a fragment of the virus, which then sets off the body's immune response. In the United States, the shots were initially hailed for turning back the pandemic, then viewed by some with suspicion and fear. Some officials, including Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have falsely said that they are highly dangerous and even deadly. Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services sought to limit the vaccine's availability to pregnant women, children and healthy younger adults. The administration also canceled a nearly $600 million contract with the drugmaker Moderna to develop an mRNA shot for humans against bird flu. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Miami Herald
a day ago
- Miami Herald
Long line at the water fountain in Australia? It might be from all the cockatoos
In parks and reserves in western Sydney, stopping for a drink may take just a little bit longer. Across the Australian playgrounds, sports fields and public spaces, twist-handled water fountains allow the public to stop for water in the middle of their play. But starting in 2018, park rangers noticed humans weren't the only ones taking advantage of the refreshment. Large white birds with long, yellow crests were seen lining up along a fence waiting for their turn at the water fountain, researchers said in a June 4 study published in the peer-reviewed journal Biology Letters. They are wild sulphur-crested cockatoos, a group who earned the moniker of 'trash parrots' after the east Australian locals previously learned to open trash bins. 'Despite being globally threatened by habitat loss and the pet trade, parrots are often successful urban adaptors, with invasive and native populations established in cities worldwide,' researchers said. Hoping to learn more about the learned behavior, researchers set up trail cameras to capture video of the cockatoos drinking, according to the study. 'Between (Aug. 29 and Oct. 11, 2019), we installed two motion-triggered wildlife cameras pointing from either side towards a drinking fountain where we had previously observed cockatoos drinking,' researchers said. 'This drinking fountain, similar to others in the local area, consisted of a rubber top with embedded spout on a concrete stand of approximately (3.3 feet) high, with a twist and spring-loaded handle approximately (6 inches) from the top.' Not only did the images show the cockatoos were using the fountains, but they were forming lines in order to have access to the fresh water, according to the study. Video of the cockatoos using the fountain was shared by LiveScience. 'The behavior consists of a combination of actions involving both feet, bill and shifting body weight to start the water flow. This apparent complexity in behavior is potentially reflected in our finding that while it appeared to be well-established in the local population, only 52% of attempts by marked birds to operate the drinking fountain were successful,' according to the study. Previous research showed about half of attempts to open trash bins were successful, researchers said, so this second learned behavior followed a very similar success rate. The photos and videos showed 'extensive queuing for drinking fountains' which was different from the trash bins, but likely because 'water at drinking fountains is effectively infinite,' researchers said. 'Thus, while we observed higher success rates when fewer birds were around, all individuals could feasibly eventually access water,' according to the study. Water fountain innovation is said to be closer to a cultural exchange than evolutionary change, according to the study. Innovations 'live and die' with individual birds unless it is taught and learned by other cockatoos and then taught to the next generation. The fountain-drinking cockatoos were studied in western Sydney, in southeastern Australia. The research team includes Barbara C. Klump, David Walter, John M. Martin and Lucy M. Aplin.
