Would humans ever have the ability to genetically engineer sentience into other species?

Question: Would humans ever have the ability to genetically engineer sentience into other species?
- Keywords:
  animal,
  future,
  sentience
Asked by sullythecharizard to Alessandro, Angela, Claudia, Marina, Phil on 18 Mar 2013.
- Phillip Wilkinson answered on 18 Mar 2013:
  
  Love this question!
  
  My favorite series of books is based on this – David Brin’s Uplift series. In this book we have genetically engineered dolphins and monkeys to be sentient along with us!
  
  Is it possible, in theory yes. There are obvious ethical complications to this. It also depends on what we mean by sentience. We have trained some chimpanzees to communicate using sign language and researchers are able to have full conversations with them. Mostly about bananas though I imagine 😛

Question: Would humans ever have the ability to genetically engineer sentience into other species?