.......Frozen and very well conserved


By NICHOLAS WADE
July 15, 2007

Can the long-extinct mammoth be resurrected through the alchemy of modern biology?

Such hopes were raised yet again last week by the recent discovery, in the permafrost of Siberia’s Yamal peninsula, of a 6-month-old female that died perhaps 10,000 years ago.

“It’s a lovely little baby mammoth indeed, found in perfect condition,” Alexei Tikhonov, the deputy director of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Reuters last week.

The best hope would be if some of her eggs had been preserved in arrested state, much the way human eggs are stored in the freezers of fertility clinics. Sperm from an elephant could possibly tickle the egg awake from its long hibernation.

But mammoths rarely die in the controlled-temperature conditions necessary to preserve eggs without harm. Intact organs are seldom found. To retrieve viable sperm or eggs “seems an even more remote chance,” said Alex Greenwood, a biologist at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., who has worked on mammoth DNA.

The alternative, far more laborious, would be to analyze the sequence of DNA units in the mammoth’s genome, make a copy of the DNA, and have it take over an elephant’s egg.

Each of those steps has long seemed impossible. But advances in the last few months have made each seem slightly less daunting. Analyzing the DNA sequence is complicated by the fact that ancient DNA, when it can be retrieved at all from fossil bones, is always highly degraded. The genome in every cell breaks down after death into thousands of small fragments of DNA.

But a new kind of DNA decoding machine happens to use such fragments as its starting material. At McMaster University in Canada, Hendrik Poinar and Régis Debruyne plan to use of one the machines, from 454 Life Sciences, to reconstruct a mammoth genome. The remaining obstacle is money. If they had $1 million, they could generate a rough draft of a mammoth genome in about a month, Dr. Debruyne said.

The reconstructed sequence of DNA units would then need to be turned into an actual mammoth genome. Mammalian genomes are made up of chromosomes of about 100 million DNA units in length and are beyond the capacity of current synthesis. Still, researchers at the Venter Institute in Rockville, Md., say they are close to synthesizing the genome of a bacterium that is 500,000 units long.

The third problem is that the DNA molecule in each chromosome is festooned with special proteins that control and read out its genetic information. No one knows how to add these proteins to DNA, but Venter Institute researchers showed last month that, at least in the case of bacteria, a naked piece of DNA inserted into a cell will somehow acquire the right control proteins and then take over the cell.

Resurrecting the mammoth is still not possible, but has become at least worth thinking about.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/weekinre.../15basic.html?_

Ikinda hope we neve clone a extinct creatiure. For one hing they were meant to be extint anohter is playing god.

C'mmon! is just an hairy Elephant.

pretty much yes but not exactly the same as a modern elephant.

Dude on the lefts thinking "dang that's gotta be old"

If they clone that thing it will be more mean than modern elephants and cause mayhem same if they cloned dinos it would be a real jurassic park.

I think it's cute... brings out the maternal instinct in me.

To clone, or not to clone... there is the question.

Should we jump at the chance to repopulate the Earth with long extinct creatures that once roamed?

Or should we acknowledge evolution's plan so far for Earth and leave sleeping mammoths lie?

I stopped reading when I read "alchemy of modern biology".

Here's a thought if they crossed the mammoth with a pig would we have a hammoth lol :rofl: :rofl: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause:

Well,part of the extintion of this animal was caused by the prehistoric man.,just look at the drawings of the caves or just watch the movie Ice Age.

One word to cloning dinos dangerous for our health!

CS...perhaps one could watch a Discovery or History Channel documentery program....something a bit more scientific....rather than a childrens movie...they are out there

This children movie show "something" that is true.,i not mean the entire movie and this is not something out there is something legitimate.

Humans didn't kill all the mamoths. It was also due to climate change. But, I do think that if it's extinct it's only natural for us to try to bring it back. Does that mean it's right? No. It just means we'll want to probably.

I never said they extinct the mammoth but they hunt the mammoths.

Cool!

Look. There is that mad scientist from Ghost Busters standing in the background!

is Just half the way, we think he will survive with similar elephant diet, maybe yes maybe no. which Zoo is going to take care of it. we are having terrible problems just keeping male elephants in our zoos today they are very aggressive and they eat too much. No only the money but the people to take care of it. I think is very bad idea. keep it dead...:tease:

Well i think it would be amazing if we did...as for playing God there is no God so i can't see him minding....

Not a bad idea.
I'm all for it.
If we can successfully do this then we can eventually bring back a vast majority of extinct animals, we had a direct hand in killing off. The DO-DO Bird for one.
Think of it as a step toward correcting our mistakes.
What in the world would be wrong with that?