Cloning is an understandably controversial subject, and it would appear that all the excitement about cloning humans may have been somewhat premature. But this sounds like a potentially most entertaining application of the principle:
After a six-year search Japanese scientists are preparing to clone prehistoric woolly mammoths from frozen DNA samples found in Siberia.
Inspired by Dolly the sheep – cloned from the cell of an adult ewe in Scotland in 1996 – and the film Jurassic Park, researchers from Kagoshima and Kinki universities and the Gifu Science and Technology Centre began the search in 1997 for sperm or tissue from mammoths preserved in the tundra.
The plan was to find a frozen male, recover samples of its sperm, inseminate a modern elephant and create a mammoth-elephant hybrid. No sperm was ever found. Several mammoths, preserved in the permafrost, have been identified in Siberia but the DNA was degraded.
So how are they doing?
The Japanese scientists collected samples of bone marrow, muscle and skin from mammoth remains found in Siberia last August. Yesterday, after a year fighting Russian bureaucracy, the samples arrived.
The researchers face a series of new hurdles. First, they have to confirm the samples are from mammoths, then see if they can isolate a full set of chromosomes. Then they would have to fuse an egg from a living relative – an elephant – with DNA from an extinct creature. Then there would be the challenge of implanting the embryo into the womb of a host mother.
Doesn’t sound very much like “cloning” to me. And since this is the Guardian, no article about a creature that thrives in a cold climate would be complete without a gratuitous reference to global warming.
If they overcame all these challenges, they would then be faced with the biggest of all: what to do with a lonely ice age mammal in a rapidly warming world.
Oh for heavens sake. Go north. Use a fridge. Biggest challenge of all indeed.
And as to what to do with it, hasn’t the Guardian heard of show business? That’s what all this is about. This is not “pure” science, which pure science seldom is anyway. Think Jurassic Park. Think Elephant Man. Or in this case Elephant Mammoth.
I know there are lots of moral, ethical and legal issues involved in all of this. But the selfish sci-fi geek in me can only think: “This needs to happen.”
I want my wooly mammoth!!
I have to admit my major interests inthis story are two fold.
A. Are they good hunting?
B. What do they taste like?
Uhmmmm, mammoth…
A minor interest is, can they be herded?
I’m trying to imagine what mammoths found to eat.
They’re always pictured on book covers being surrounded by cavemen in scenes full of rock and ice. Did they perhaps actually live and eat greenery in places a little further south than glacier country, more along the lines of today’s Hampshire or Kent?
I once went on an expedition with a field biologist who, on a trip to Alaska had come across a frozen mammoth. They had mammoth steak that night. He said it was edible.
I worry about what Japan’s next cloning project might produce.
You know, in theory this announcement SHOULD take the bite out of the animal rights lobby, they say were driving an animal to extinction and we retort “maybe….but we’ll just grow some new ones.” In good form however, Greenpeace poopooed the idea of using cloning to supplement or even bring back endangered or extinct species. LOL, it unmasks them, its a technology that can at least somewhat mitigate their complaints…but they don’t want that, as its advanced biotechnology that would be doing it (which they as luddites can’t stand). and it also would be bypassing the “social issues” they insist on worrying over and providing a quick and utilitarian answer to a problem that they much more desire to punt around the world until they’ve managed to retard scientific and economic growth. Gah, i’m going into this field actually…part of me hopes theres some secret research organization out there somewhere doing everything that Greenpeace and ilk fear…while spending half their time tweaking little mustaches and laughing manically….I can hope….
They are trying to do the same thing with the extinct “Tasmanian Tiger” which is actually a native marsupial dog more correctly known as a “Thylacine” in Australia. The last known specimen died in captivity in the 1920’s…
The reason this is better than a mammoth is obvious….You could have one as a pet!
Hmmm…didn’t know that about Greenpeace, but it doesn’t surprise me. A year or two ago, I sent an email to them to advocate a worldwide (privately funded) effort to collect tissue samples of plants and animals that are endangered. The result could be used as a measure of insurance against despeciation. Should one of the species end up extinct, we could (in theory, at least) use a still-living genetic-cousin to re-start the line of extinct species. Sounds like a fantastic idea to me…but probably all the more why they wouldn’t condone it. 😉