• Question: if we were given a wing cell from a bird , would we be able to fly ?

    Asked by caitlink0406 to Amy, Drew, Julia, Kimberley, Sara on 19 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by eviej26.
    • Photo: Drew Rae

      Drew Rae answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      Hi Caitlin – A lot of people have tried to fly through history. It turns out that the problem isn’t the wing, it’s the chest muscles. Not only can’t we flap, we can’t hold our body weight on wings like that. That’s why hang-gliders have a rigid frame.

    • Photo: Amy MacQueen

      Amy MacQueen answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      Hi Caitlin! Drew’s right – also birds store energy in a different way, they metabolise differently and this probably makes them lighter….and they have many hollow bones which also makes them lighter and able to fly. So its possible you could engineer a wing to form – if you could overcome the cell’s rejection by our bodies immune system. But you would still have the problem of our aerodynamic and weight issues!! 🙂

    • Photo: Sara Imari Walker

      Sara Imari Walker answered on 18 Jun 2011:

      Hello caitlin and evie!! Well first off the wing cells of birds aren’t that special compared to any other cells in the bird. What’s really cool about multicellular life is that all the cells in our body contain the same genetic information!! So wings muscle cells differentiate (biology buzz word yay!) for the specialized function they have that enables flight but they are fundamentally the same as all other bird cells. So actually we could take any cell from a bird. But what we really would want is a stem cell. Stem cells are very special cells that have not yet differentiated. They can divide through mitosis and differentiate into diverse specialized cell types (like wing cells!) and they can also produce more stem cells. If we took a stem cell it could differentiate to make us new wing cells. What we’d want to do with it though is what Amy has suggested – we might engineer it with a little of our own DNA so that we could grow wings large enough to support our weight. They’d have to be pretty massive wings though – birds actually have hollow bones to make them light for flight!

      Really interesting question!

    • Photo: Julia Griffen

      Julia Griffen answered on 19 Jun 2011:

      We’d need massive wings for our big bodies… we’re just not designed for it. Birds have an aerodynamic design and light body weight in comparision to thier wing span… They have to control thier diet as if they get too fat they wudn;t be able to fly.. e.g the common kestrel (small UK bord of prey) cannot fly if it eats too much which puts it at risk from predators… slightly off topic.. sorry 🙂

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