Michael Crichton would be proud.
Within five years, a woolly mammoth will likely be cloned, according to scientists who have just recovered well-preserved bone marrow in a mammoth thigh bone. Japan's Kyodo News first reported the find. You can see photos of the thigh bone at this Kyodo page.
Russian scientist Semyon Grigoriev, acting director of the Sakha Republic's mammoth museum, and colleagues are now analyzing the marrow, which they extracted from the mammoth's femur, found in Siberian permafrost soil.
Grigoriev and his team, along with colleagues from Japan's Kinki University, have announced that they will launch a joint research project next year aimed at re-creating the enormous mammal, which went extinct around 10,000 years ago.
Mammoths used to be a common sight on the landscape of North America and Eurasia. One of my favorite papers of recent months concerned the earliest-known depiction of an animal from the Americas. It was a mammoth engraved on a mammoth bone. Many of our distant ancestors probably had regular face-to-face encounters with the elephant-like giants.
The key to cloning the woolly mammoth is to replace the nuclei of egg cells from an elephant with those extracted from the mammoth's bone marrow cells. Doing this, according to the researchers, can result in embryos with mammoth DNA. That's actually been known for a while.
What's been missing is woolly mammoth nuclei with undamaged genes. Scientists have been on a Holy Grail-type search for such pristine nuclei since the late 1990s. Now it sounds like the missing genes may have been found.
In an odd twist, global warming may be responsible for the breakthrough.
Warmer temperatures tied to global warming have thawed ground in eastern Russia that is almost always permanently frozen. As a result, researchers have found a fair number of well-preserved frozen mammoths there, including the one that yielded the bone marrow.
Is it such a good idea, however, to clone animals that have long been extinct? For a while there's been some discussion of a real-life Jurassic Park setup containing such animals. Introducing these beasts into existing ecosystems could be like bringing in a potentially invasive species that would try to fill some space presently held by other animal(s). Even if the cloned animals were contained in special parks, there could still be a risk of spreading.
So if the woolly mammoth is successfully cloned sooner rather than later, we'd probably be left with more questions and controversy than answers, at least in the short term.
Source: Discovery News
Home »
grigoriev »
japan »
Jurassic Park »
Kyodo »
mammoth »
Michael Crichton »
semyon »
Siberia »
woolly »
Woolly Mammoth to Be Cloned
Woolly Mammoth to Be Cloned
Tags :
grigoriev,
japan,
Jurassic Park,
Kyodo,
mammoth,
Michael Crichton,
semyon,
Siberia,
woolly
Related : Woolly Mammoth to Be Cloned
Mysterious 'Samurai Ghost' Boots Appear in Vacation Photo (video)This photo of a four-year-old girl on a beach in Zushi, Japan, seems innocent until you look closely behind her legs and back. A closer look appears to reveal a mys ...
More mysterious holes found in RussiaMOSCOW (Reuters) - Two more craters of unknown origin have been spotted in Russia's Siberia region, weeks after a similar-looking hole was found in the isolated north ...
Security camera shows ‘tsunami victim ghost’ follow man into a cab (video)Taxi drivers in Japan have been reporting ghost passengers in areas worst hit by the 2011 tsunami. Now it appears one may have been captured on camera after eerie ...
Russian Woman Stored 'Alien Corpse' in her Fridge for 2 Years Alien life? This strange 'body' was said to have been discovered by two walkers close to Irkutsk, Siberia, in a renowned hotspot for extraterrestrial behaviour H ...
The Haunted Suicide ForestYoutuber Top5s takes a look inside Japan's Infamous Aokigahara Forest..... What do you think?and check this out... ...
The 10 Craziest Science Experiments Ever ConductedFrom trying to clone Mammoths to the MK Ultra project. Here is a look at ten of the craziest science experiments ever conducted.and check this out... THIS WEBCAST IS UNC ...
Mystery light beams appear in Japan (video)Dozens of mystery light columns appeared in Japan following a unusual thunderstorm.Hundreds of people witnessed this rare and frightening phenomena, as fiery light colum ...
Scientists Sign Deal to Clone Woolly MammothRussian and South Korean scientists, including the cloning expert who was the focus of a stem-cell scandal six years ago, have signed a deal to try re-creating a woolly ...
Japanese girls collapse at haunted school, vengeful ghost blamedThe Japanese internet is exploding after a succession of high school girls in Fukuoka Prefecture disturbingly collapsed during school hours on Monday. Students who wer ...
Top 10 Most Haunted Places in JapanFrom the Doryodo Ruins to the Atsugi Naval Base, here is a look at ten of the most haunted places in Japan.and check this out... ...
New Star Wars TrailerNew Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer was shown during the D23 Expo in Tokyo, Japan with lots of new scenes and dialogue. Check it out… ...
"Woolly Mammoth" Spotted in Siberia (Video)A BEAST lurches through icy waters in a sighting a paranormal investigator thinks could prove woolly mammoths are not extinct after all. The animal – thought ...
Taxi Drivers still plagued by "Ghostly" passengers in JapanA taxi driver in north-east Japan picks up a passenger in an area devastated by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.He starts the meter and asks for the destination, to ...
What is the Mysterious "Magic Vending Machine" ?SCP-261 The Magic Vending MachineMy friend Nyq posted on Facebook his curiosity about a mysterious "Magic Vending Machine" in Japan. So I did some research and couldn't ...
Top 30 Creepiest Japanese Urban LegendsCursed poems, cursed flash animations, cursed dreams, cursed mirrors and a whole slew of demons, these are the top 30 creepiest japanese urban legends.and check out our ...