Sequence and rewind: Scientists are racing to clone the extinct woolly mammoth and other prehistoric beasts, perhaps one day creating a real life 'prehistoric zoo'.
Credit: AFP
It may seem like science fiction, but it's not. Not even ten years after the first mammal was cloned, scientists are racing to clone the first extinct species.
February 2007 marks 10 years since Scottish scientists announced they had successfully cloned Dolly the sheep. It was a huge accomplishment, and the culmination of decades of research. Now she sits at the top of a long list of clones including cats, pigs, cows, a dog, monkeys, horses and goats.
Perhaps, though, the most significant addition to this ever-growing list was Noah the gaur. The gaur is an endangered, large, dark-coloured ox with a humplike ridge on its back and white or yellow stockings on all four legs - and its numbers are steadily declining.
Noah became the first member of an endangered species to be successfully cloned when he was born in 2001. He was brought to term by a surrogate mother - Bessie, a domestic cow. Unfortunately, Noah died after only two days due to an infection reportedly unrelated to cloning.
The U.S. biotechnology company that cloned Noah, Advanced Cell Technologies (ACT), proclaimed their work as altruistic. "We don't see this as a profit centre for the company," according to Michael West, President of ACT. "Our thought is simply that the human species has casually used technology to despoil the planet, the least we can do is use the technologies we work with every day to make a small contribution to save innocent and endangered species."
Born along with Noah was an intriguing new method of maintaining biodiversity. Approximately 100 species continue to go extinct each day, and governments and conservation groups are fighting to protect the animals endemic to their lands.
The San Diego Zoo, in the U.S., hosts a frozen repository of tissue from 675 endangered species. Twenty-five years ago the Frozen Zoo was filled only with sperm and ovaries. Now it also holds cell-lines and tissue samples from any part of the body.
Using skin cells from the Frozen Zoo, ACT cloned another endangered species in 2003. Two bantengs - another Southeast Asian ox - were created using the same basic method as for Dolly the sheep. The company took DNA from banteng skin cells and put it in the egg of a domestic cow that had already had its DNA removed. What was unique with the banteng was that a member of a different species provided the egg.
Nature has its own frozen zoo. Unlike the youthful San Diego Zoo, in existence for only 25 years, the vast wastelands of Siberia have held animals trapped in permafrost for as long as 200,000 years. This repository hasn't escaped the attention of ambitious scientists.
In 2002 Akira Iritani, from Kinki University in Japan, announced plans for his team to create 'Pleistocene Park' - a home for resurrected woolly mammoths, extinct for approximately 3,500 years. Later additions would include the woolly rhinoceros, which hasn't roamed the Earth for more than 10,000 years.
It is a race against time, partly because climate change is melting the permafrost in Siberia, uncovering ancient animal remains at an increasing rate. Once uncovered, the specimens begin to rot, degrading DNA that may have remained intact for eons.
Extinct species menu
Appetizer: BUffalo Passenger Pigeon Wings
Soup: Megalodon Shark Fin Soup
Main Course: Mammoth Steaks in a Brown Sugar/Bourbon Sauce served with garlic mashed potatoes and roasted eggplant or....
Corn stuffed Dodo birds with wild mushroom risotto
Dessert: Ice Cream
I would like some help
I am about to do a thesis paper on cloning and I think that dinosaurs and wooly mammoths are a great place to start. I view cloning extinct animals as a way to learn about ancient biology and a pretty cool way to learn stuff. I want to get the view of a real scientist to help me on my paper(and to impress my teacher). I don't view it as playing God, but as tapping into the human potential
Jon Blake
tell me
since when do temperatures drop cold enough and quick enought to freeze an animal like a mammoth solid, cause that would be like 150 degrees F, and from what I know, things dont get that cold instantly
Bring back extinct animals?
Honestly I'd say It's not a good idea. There isn't much use for bringing back animals that became extinct by natural causes and if we wiped them out then it may happen again. And who says that they would survive today, their habitats were different back then. Sure It would be great to see some of them back again but how do we know they aren't dangerous. If they have no benefit to us then we'd be wasting our time. You can yell at me and disagree all you like but that's just my opinion.
nothing in particular!
hi,
just thought i'd mention that in spite the cost of living its still popular.heres another interesting fact: Barbies real name is Barbira Millicent Roberts and today she has over 1 million pairs of shoes.
I beg to differ..
I'm not sure how many people are still visiting and reading comments, but I feel like I should put something here. From what I read, there weren't very many people commenting that had very much to say from the scientific perspective about all this.
While the concept is very interesting to think about and can certainly make millions with movies like Jurassic Park, I am personally convinced that the technology won't be able to recreate these animals (to any real likeness, anyway) for two reasons.
First, these things embryologists call 'cytoplasmic determinants.' When an egg and sperm meet, the 'instructions' don't come from the genetic material of the joined cells - they come from temporary instructions laid down by the mother inside the egg. Those are the determinants. So, even if we have the genetic material used to make a woolly mammoth, we don't have a woolly mammoth egg which contains the same instructions that are needed for those first cellular divisions of the organism, which are probably the most important.
Second, a huge part of any large mammal is the natural, healthy bacteria that live inside the animal. They help with digestion, immunity, and nutrient metabolism. Even in the unlikely event that the mammoth is not killed by some virus or bacteria that wasn't around while they roamed the earth, it is unlikely that the correct combination of symbiotic bacteria can be found to provide them the full health they would have had back in their environment. Things have evolved since they've been around.
Anyway, these are my own personal arguments for why this probably won't work quite as flawlessly and easily as many seem to think. Cloning technology is a tricky business, and there are only more potential pitfalls to avoid even if the embryo is successful. I can see some potential ways around these even as I type them, but I suppose only time can tell. I am not naive enough to try and say what technology might exist even 10 years from now, so we may have them in our zoos by then. But as far as I can tell, unlikely.