Scientists a step closer to cloning mammoth

[kristopher]

Scientists a step closer to cloning mammoth
Kyodo

YAKUTSK, Russia — The thighbone of a mammoth found in August in Siberia contains well-preserved marrow, increasing the chances of cloning one of the extinct beasts, Japanese and Russian scientists confirmed recently.

The teams from the Sakha Republic's mammoth museum in eastern Russia and Kinki University's graduate school in biology-oriented science and technology will launch full-fledged joint research next year to clone the giant mammal, which is believed to have become extinct about 10,000 years ago, they said.

By transplanting nuclei taken from the marrow cells into elephant egg cells whose nuclei have been removed through a cloning technique, embryos with a mammoth gene could be produced and planted into elephant wombs, as the two species are close relatives, they said.

Securing nuclei with an undamaged gene is essential for the nucleus transplantation technique, but doing so from mammoths is extremely difficult and scientists have been trying to reproduce a mammoth since the late 1990s, they said.

In the Sakha Republic, global warming has thawed...

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20111204a2.html

[HopeHoops]

1. Did anyone ask the mammoths if they WANTED to be cloned?

I mean, the world's pretty fucked up as it is and releasing them into the wild would just give poachers something else to kill. I don't think a mammoth would want to be a zoo freak. Most zoo animals look bored all to hell.

[Dead_Parrot]

2. Can't ask them 'til you clone them... ;)

I'd agree that we'd probably end up with mammoths, and nowhere to put them. But if (and it's a very big if) we manage to sort out our problems, viable sets of DNA would make a nice gift to future generations.

Christmas presents for the kids.