Re: Do a baby develop wings when DNA from a bird is placed into the baby's cell

Dear Yan,

Thank you for such an interesting question!  To begin with, it is definitely 
possible to place cells from one organism into another organism.  Such a 
creature even has a special name:  CHIMERA, after a fire-breathing 
monster from Greek mythology which had the head of a lion, the body of a 
goat, and the tail of a serpent.  Nowadays, any organism ( plant, mouse, 
primate, whatever) which contains some cells (and hence DNA) from another 
species  is called a Chimera.  However, the results of such genetic trickery 
are not nearly as exciting as a lion-headed, goat-bodied, serpent-tailed 
fire-breathing monster, or even a winged human, to address your specific 
question.  To understand why your proposed experiment wouldn't work, you 
need to know that the genes which direct a developing baby bird to make a 
wing and the genes that direct a baby human to make an arm are already VERY 
similar.  Indeed, if you compare the wing of a bird to your own arm, you'll 
notice that they share a very similar design -- or, to throw another science 
term at you, they are HOMOLOGOUS structures. However, buildiing a body is a 
very complicated process, requiring the coordination of cell movements and 
the expression of MANY genes over a long period of time, and due to species-
specific signals in the cells that will develop into limbs, baby birds end 
up with wings, and we humans get arms. 

I hope this helps, please write again if you would like more information 
about this topic

Warm regards, 

Jen