Jurassic Park @ 35: Reflections on evolutionary genetics, de-extinction, and the science-society interface

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 3 of this Preprint. You must log in to post a comment. There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article. This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 3 of this Preprint. Add a Comment You must log in to post a comment. Comments There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article. On the 35th anniversary of the release of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, I reflect on both technical and cultural themes of the novel that resonate in the current moment. First, I offer a concise review of three evolutionary concepts—plasticity, pleiotropy, and epistasis—that complicate our efforts to engineer organisms with desirable phenotypes. I show how these ideas play out in the fictional narrative of Jurassic Park and in real-world genome engineering projects such as the “de-extinction” of the dire wolf. I then consider the broader technical and social significance of the novel: its lessons for our quest to control biological systems, its cautionary critique of techno-optimism, and its rich portrayal of scientists. The perspective is organized around quotes from Ian Malcolm, a fictional mathematician who offers insightful commentary on the challenges of the biotechnological exploits in the story. I argue that the novel’s lessons are especially valuable today, as we reassess the ambitions guiding scientific practices. https://doi.org/10.32942/X2TM08 Life Sciences evolutionary genetics, de-extinction, bioengineering, science and society Published: 2025-10-13 08:32 Last Updated: 2026-05-04 17:01 CC-By Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Conflict of interest statement: None to declare Data and Code Availability Statement: There are no biological data in this manuscript. All of the figures are built using fully simulated data and are intended to be fictional. However, we have provided tables of the simulated data used to generate Figure 1 on Github: https://github.com/OgPlexus/JP1 Language: English