The headline really caught my attention. "Martian ‘Spiders’ Re-Created in Lab for First Time." My first thought was, "The only spiders from Mars I ever heard about were friends of David Bowie. If they had actually found life on Mars, there would have been news. And besides, what are they doing some kind of genetic engineering? It's not that good yet!

Is it?

Okay. That was more like my first, second, third and fourth thoughts. But you get the idea. It turns out that the Martian spiders they were referring to are jagged breaks in the Martian landscape, radiating out from a central point. Spider-like, see? The reality turned out to be much less interesting than what my imagination conjured up from that wickedly deceptive headline. Fascinating though I'm sure this story is to planetary scientists, geologists and chemists, it's one of those cases where the truth is much more boring than fiction.

But there's a tiny (read: extremely tiny) kernel of truth in the fiction. After all, recombinant DNA research, meaning taking DNA from one thing and using it to modify the DNA of another thing to make something a little bit new, has been around since the 1970s. One of the weird and fascinating benefits of recombinant DNA is what is now called optogenetics. This is where a small bit of DNA from a light sensitive microorganism (Bacteria. Fungus. That kind of stuff) is implanted in the DNA of something else, like a mouse. If you position the new DNA very carefully, you then have a mouse with brain cells that can be switched on and off just by shining a light on it!

No, this isn't a party trick. It's used for serious research into how specific parts of the brain affect behavior or even mental illness. It is now (almost, kind a sort a) possible to make a mouse that is schizophrenic or not, just by flipping a light switch¹. Cool, huh?

Believe it or not, it's also been possible for a while now to develop a genome² for a thing from scratch. First, you have to know what it looks like. Your average genome has anywhere from 10s of thousands of components, what they call "base pairs," to many millions. The human genome has around three billion base pairs. It's pretty big, though not the biggest by any means.

I did all of that discussion of genetics and interesting things that can be done with it so I could get to these questions:

1. How big is a spider genome?

2. What would we have to do to genetically engineer spiders to live on Mars?

3. Could we do it?

Spiders come in a lot of varieties. Only a few of their genomes have been sequenced³. The ones that have seem to be pretty big. Between 1.5 billion and 4.5 billion base pairs. So trying to build one of these yourself would be a big job.

How about splicing new capabilities into one to make a new, more Martian, spider? What would be needed. To begin with, Mars is very cold. Very cold. It averages around -85 degrees Fahrenheit (NEGATIVE 85), although it can get up into the 70s (positive, not negative) at the equator. At high noon. In summer. That's a problem. The coldest place on Earth is Antarctica, where almost nothing - including spiders - lives because it's so cold⁴. Creating spiders that can live in the cold seems like a tall ask.

But, we know that during times of great cold on Earth, a lot of animals went big. Not dinosaurs. Think mastodon and giant tree sloths. So maybe making a big spider would be a good start. Genetically engineering them to be bigger than they normally are is probably feasible. We might be able to do it with current tech. We might even be able to do at least some of it by simply breeding the biggest examples of a big spider (like a tarantula) with each other for a few hundred or thousand generations. Finding volunteers to feed, study and breed them might be a small problem. Money can probably fix that, though. Maybe.

Anyway, there are also adaptations that some creatures make in very cold temperatures that changes the freezing point of bodily fluids. You're going to want your spider to have that, too. Recombinant DNA stuff fits perfectly here.

You could even give your genetically engineered monster spiders a trial run by releasing them into Antarctica. I'm sure that violates any number of treaties and norms but, hey! It's for science so it's all good, right?

I have more thoughts on this subject. Mars also has very little oxygen and lots more radiation than Earth. Is there anything we can do about that? Plus, there's a question I've ignored today that should be fun to talk about. That is: Why in the world would you want to make spiders from Mars except just to amuse yourself (and horrify everyone else)? There might be actual reasons!

Stay tuned for another installment of this topic ... someday soon!

Here's that prompt: "A surreal scene on the surface of Mars featuring giant spiders walking across the red, rocky terrain. In the background, a futuristic spaceship is wrapped in intricate webbing, as if trapped by the spiders. The Martian sky is a dusty, reddish-orange hue, with distant mountains and craters visible. The spiders are enormous, with long, spindly legs and gleaming, reflective eyes, casting shadows on the ground. The spaceship has sleek, metallic surfaces, partially obscured by the thick, silvery webs. The overall atmosphere is eerie and otherworldly."