Woolly Mammoth To Be Cloned

[Faline]

Scientists believe it may be possible to clone a woolly mammoth within five years after finding well-preserved bone marrow in a thigh bone recovered from permafrost soil in Siberia.
Teams from Russia's Sakha Republic's mammoth museum and Japan's Kinki University will launch fully-fledged joint research next year aiming to recreate the giant mammal, Japan's Kyodo News reported from Yakutsk, Russia.
By replacing the nuclei of egg cells from an elephant with those taken from the mammoth's marrow cells, embryos with mammoth DNA can be produced, Kyodo said, citing the researchers.

Mammoth bones like this one have been dug up many times before, but finding one with undamaged genes has proven a challenge:


The scientists will then plant the embryos into elephant wombs for delivery as the two species are close relatives, the report said
Securing nuclei with an undamaged gene is essential for the nucleus transplantation technique, it said.
For scientists involved in the research since the late 1990s, finding nuclei with undamaged mammoth genes has been a challenge.

The thigh bone was discovered in the permafrost soil of Siberia as were these tusks which came from an entire 23,000-year-old mammoth dug up in 1999:


Mammoths became extinct about 10,000 years ago.
But the discovery in August in Siberia has increased the chances of a successful cloning.
Global warming has thawed ground in eastern Russia that is usually almost permanently frozen, leading to the discoveries of a number of frozen mammoths, the report said.

[güttsfükk]

Originally Posted by Kelly

Japan's Kinki University

[Illusion]

It's about time considering they had Mammoth dna a long while ago. Waiting for the cloning of Neanderthals. Every family should have one.

[BryanXavier]

Thank Illusion. You're pointing out why they wont be cloned Too many ethical hurdles.

[güttsfükk]

Originally Posted by Illusion

It's about time considering they had Mammoth dna a long while ago. Waiting for the cloning of Neanderthals. Every family should have one.

i have been hearing this story come out every 3-5 years for the last 2 decades. and they're always "planning to clone" or "believe they have finally got DNA that's good enough"

i'll believe it when they finally release a statement that it's been done


no one remember the multiple times we've read that a mammoth carcass has been found in the thawing ice in siberia?

[güttsfükk]

the baby mammoth for example that was supposed to be good enough for us to clone from in 2007

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6284214.stm

[güttsfükk]

one from 1999

The Japan Times
July 24, 1999
Preserved in permafrost, 23,000-year-old beast may be cloned

Siberian mammoth found frozen

HOT SPRINGS, S.D. (Reuters) An adult woolly mammoth mummified 23,000 years ago under Siberia's frozen tundra will be dug out of the permafrost and may one day be cloned, an international team of scientists said Thursday.

In a scenario worthy of the fictional, cloned dinosaurs in the "Jurassic Park" movies, French explorer Bernard Buigues said the intact soft tissues and the hair of the Jarkov mammoth held out the possibility of recovering intact DNA.

"It will be interesting to know the habits of this animal and what he was doing in this place that was a very difficult place to live," Buigues said in a teleconference with reporters from southwestern South Dakota, a center for fossil finds.

"In the pictures we have, you see all the kinds of hair that the mammoth has. The color is intact," said Buigues, who is affiliated with the National History Museum of France. "The smell of the skin is also there."

Most likely, any attempt to clone the extinct woolly mammoth - an example of one of the six or seven known species of mammoth that roamed the Earth through the Pleistocene era - would be done by using a genetically similar Asian elephant as the gestating mother, said Larry Ageneroad, a geology professor at the University of Northern Arizona, who will join the team in Russia in September.

The Jarkov mammoth, named for the local tribesmen who discovered the buried beast and who previously removed its valuable tusks, is a male who died at age 47, Buigues said. The exposed head has decomposed, but the body remains intact under the permafrost, or permanently frozen tundra.

The six-week excavation project will begin in September as temperatures cool and will entail digging out a 33-ton block of permafrost containing the mammoth's body.

The block will be flown by Russia's largest helicopter to the ice caves in Khatanga, Siberia, where a subfreezing laboratory will be fashioned for scientists.

This adult specimen is different from others found in Siberia and elsewhere because scientists will be able to examine grass and other flora that were preserved with it, and possibly recover organs and even sperm.

Many of the plants that mammoths were known to eat on the mountainous steppes of what is now the North American Rocky Mountains and Siberia are known to still exist, but the mystery of the mammoth's extinction persists, the scientists said.

[güttsfükk]

they found another baby calf almost perfectly prserved in siberia in august this year, wonder why they dnt mention this one in the original article in this thread

Reindeer herder finds baby mammoth in Russia Arctic

(Reuters) - A reindeer herder in Russia's Arctic has stumbled on the pre-historic remains of a baby woolly mammoth poking out of the permafrost, local officials said on Friday.

The herder said the carcass was as perfectly preserved as the 40,000-year-old mammoth calf Lyuba discovered in the same remote region four years ago, authorities said, adding that an expedition had set off hoping to confirm the "sensational" find.

"If it is true what is said about how it is preserved, this will be another sensation of global significance," expedition leader Natalia Fyodorova said in a statement on the Arctic Yamalo-Nenetsk region's official website.

Scientists planned to fly the mammoth's remains to the regional capital Salekhard, where it would be stored in a cooler to prevent the remains from decomposing.

Giant woolly mammoths have been extinct since the Earth's last Ice Age 1.8 million to around 11,500 years ago.

Scientists worldwide were stunned by the discovery of Lyuba, named after the wife of the hunter who discovered her.

Arctic ice kept the extinct specimen so immaculately preserved that although her shaggy coat was gone, her skin and internal organs were intact.

(Reporting by Alissa de Carbonnel)

[Illusion]

Great info Gutts. I suspect somewhere, scientists have been trying to clone these things for a while now.

[güttsfükk]

Originally Posted by Illusion

Great info Gutts. I suspect somewhere, scientists have been trying to clone these things for a while now.

i imagine so. just wish the media wouldnt keep making these sort of articles every few years without any new progression