Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

How To Clone A Mammoth

Posted by timothy on from the time-to-buy-a-new-bench dept.

psyconaut writes: "In a story that sounds more fitting for the big screen than the London Times, Japanese researchers are planning on cloning a mammoth by impregnating an Indian elephant. Apparently the source of the DNA will be a newly found mammoth specimen in Siberia. Due to genetic constraints, the final mammoth specimen will only be 88% pure mammoth and the process will take about 50 years."

7 of 303 comments (clear)

  1. is this cloning!!?? by tanveer1979 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "If impregnating an Indian elephant with mammoth sperm produced young, that offspring would be impregnated with more mammoth sperm and the process repeated in the next generation, producing a creature that was 88 per cent mammoth. The process would take about 50 years."

    This is not really cloning, this is similar to producing hybrid dogs by cross-breeding. And this does not really advance research, man has been doing this to crops, livestock and all for so long.
    It just seems like researchers with nothing to do. The real step forward would be the Dolly method. That would be cloning.
    Infact such a bit is underway in australia. Scientists are planning to clone a tasmaniana Tiger.
    Now that would be the perfect push for cloning tech!

    --
    My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
    FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
  2. More interesting than Zoo Attraction by Kaz+Riprock · · Score: 4, Interesting
    As a bioinformaticist, I'd find it more interesting to get the DNA sequence from these frozen specimens than growing them up Jurassic-Park-style. A lot of what we know about our "ancestor's DNA" (see the race gene, the talking gene stories by S Paabo) is extrapolated from the DNA in organisms now-a-days. The "years ago" applied to these things are highly suspect (attributed by simple math extractions based upon pseudo-expected mutation rates). Comparing the DNA of these frozen specimens to that of modern-day elephants can shed some light on mammalian DNA mutation rates and protein evolution. Right now, we can usually only make best guesses given a somewhat single-rate equation for time. It is completely imaginable that the mutations happened in batches and by looking at the differences, we may be able to answer some of these questions.

    Of course, instead we could just make these things to flash in front of the people and make them shudder in awe of our mighty genetic prowess until they escape our electric fences and hunt us down with their extended middle claw...

    --
    Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
  3. Is this like "pollution credits"? by tlambert · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is this like "pollution credits"? For every extinct species we bring back, do we get to take one out for free?

    -- Terry

  4. Mammoth DNA by lovebyte · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There is only 115 streches of DNA that are known in public databases. Most of these are not that interesting if you want to make a clone. So there is still a long way to go.

    --

    I'll do it for cheesy poofs.

  5. Re:Sabretooths by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    How can someone be cloning Smilodon? Mammoth had a tendency to get frozen due to living in chilly areas. Has someone found a frozen Smilodon? I think only rock fossils have been found.

    Or are they simply breeding something which looks like Smilodon? If they're starting with related species they should end up with something very similar.

    The Tasmanian wolf is a different matter. That is an actual cloning effort from a many-decades-old hide with scraps of tissue on it.

  6. So how mammoth will it be? by XMunkki · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "Due to genetic constraints, the final mammoth specimen will only be 88% pure mammoth and the process will take about 50 years"

    Considering that apes, baboons and the like are closer than this to humans (something like over 90% I believe?), will this just be an echo from the past? Meaning the remaining 12% might make such a huge difference that the creation would be more like a new species than a reincarnation.

  7. Pleistocene Park . . . by Liberal+Mafia · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It appears that the Japanese scientists involved want to clone up a mammoth for an "Ice Age wildlife park" in northeastern Siberia. If so, they're going to have more problems than just creating a mammoth.

    Siberia and unglaciated Alaska may have had a very different ecosystem way back then, if what paleontologists like R. Dale Guthrie have claimed is correct. The climate was colder but dryer, with a "mammoth steppe" that was more like the American West than modern-day tundra and coniferous forest, with more grass and shrubs. (Read Guthrie's Frozen Fauna: The Story of Blue Babe for details.) That's the only way it could have supported those spectacular large animals.

    I wish the article had more information on the proposed park and exactly what's going on. If they don't have any way of changing the local ecosystem back to mammoth steppe, they're going to have to feed the animals artificially, making it more like a zoo than a wildlife preserve.

    Yet, according to the article, they've already gone ahead and imported musk oxen and several hundred wild horses and are negotiating with Canada to buy bison.