A team of biotech startups is working on creating lab-grown leather using fossil remnants of the Tyrannosaurus rex, a goal considered “sustainable and ethical” for the luxury materials industry. The project involves collaboration between The Organoid Company, UK-based Lab-Grown Leather, and US marketing agency VML.
According to their announcement, the new material will be engineered from T. rex DNA, but this claim is highly unlikely due to the degraded state of dinosaur fossils. Even with well-preserved specimens, DNA doesn’t survive for more than a million years before it becomes fragmented and degraded.
Instead, the team plans to use fossilized T. rex collagen as a blueprint. However, there are concerns about contamination when analyzing T. rex specimens. A 2007 study claimed to have sequenced short peptide fragments of type 1 collagen from a T. rex fossil, but skeptics raised questions about contamination. Other studies have also raised similar concerns.
If the team can obtain genuine T. rex collagen, they would need to reverse-engineer its recipe and translate it into genetic sequences. They would then insert these sequences into a ‘bioleather cell line’ designed by The Organoid Company. At best, this lab-grown leather may contain tiny snippets of collagen that resemble those of the T. rex.
While this project is unlikely to produce “genuine dinosaur leather,” it could lead to more sustainable alternatives for the materials industry. The investment in this stunt may prevent animal species from being used as handbags and other luxury goods.
Source: https://www.sciencealert.com/worlds-first-t-rex-leather-is-claimed-to-come-from-dino-dna-is-this-for-real