How To Clone A Mammoth

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."

Comments

is this cloning!!??

[tanveer1979]

"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!

More interesting than Zoo Attraction

[Kaz Riprock]

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...

Is this like "pollution credits"?

[tlambert]

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

-- Terry