Will cloning see the mammoth brought back to life in five years?
Credit: Wikimedia
TOKYO: A project to resurrect the long-extinct mammoth will be launched by Japanese researchers this year by using cloning technology to bring the ancient pachyderm back to life in around five years time.
The researchers will try to revive the species by obtaining tissue this summer from the carcass of a mammoth preserved in a Russian research laboratory, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported.
"Preparations to realise this goal have been made," Akira Iritani, leader of the team and a professor emeritus of Kyoto University, told the mass-circulation daily.
Mammoth nuclei to be inserted into elephant
Under the plan, the nuclei of mammoth cells will be inserted into an elephant's egg cell from which the nuclei have been removed, to create an embryo containing mammoth genes, the report said. The embryo will then be inserted into an elephant's uterus in the hope that the animal will eventually give birth to a baby mammoth.
The elephant is the closest modern relative of the mammoth, a huge woolly mammal believed to have died out with the last Ice Age.
Some mammoth remains still retain useable tissue samples, making it possible to recover cells for cloning, unlike dinosaurs, which disappeared around 65 million years ago and whose remains exist only as fossils
Researchers hope to achieve their aim within five to six years, the Yomiuri said.
Animal cloning previously successful
The team, which has invited a Russian mammoth researcher and two U.S. elephant experts to join the project, has established a technique to extract DNA from frozen cells, previously an obstacle to cloning attempts because of the damage cells sustained in the freezing process.
Another Japanese researcher, Teruhiko Wakayama of the Riken Centre for Developmental Biology, succeeded in 2008 in cloning a mouse from the cells of another that had been kept in temperatures similar to frozen ground for 16 years.
Is it a good idea?
Simply put, I believe so because this can pave the way for animals (such as the Moa) that have become extinct because of our stupidity. It is important then that if this does happen we should acsertain why the mammoth went extinct and if it did because of climate change, then to let it become extinct again.
is it a good idea?
climate change that early hominids apparently caused...should we also bring them back to 'finish the job'?..and if they dont die off.. who then gets to 'finish them off'?...I guess you'd apply for it!