Cloneable Mammoth Cells Discovered in Russia

orthogonal writes "Animal Planet reports, in this article, that 'Russian scientists said Wednesday that they've found living cells in a frozen ice-age mammoth' which could be cloned, and gestated in an elephant. I see a new Republican mascot in this."

Comments

Republicans

[hackwrench]

I know they're called the Grand Old Party, but that's rediculous.

Re:Republicans

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF does "rediculous" mean? I looked it up in my dictionary but it doesn't exist. Is it one of those k001 31337 H4X0r words? Pray tell!

New mascot?

[billn]

I see a new Republican mascot in this.

What? Bigger, stupider, but forgets nothing and thinks the best solution is to trample everything underfoot that can't be eaten? Oh, all that, AND a bad ass fro for the extra 'bad hair day' bonus?

Re:New mascot?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see a new Republican mascot in this.

And in America, a new food product.

Re:New mascot?

[capnjack41]

And in America, a new food product.

Or perhaps to make fur coats out of.

Re: New mascot?

[Black Parrot]

> And in America, a new food product.

The SUV of hamburgers!

Re:New mascot?

[The Analog Kid]

Yes a new kind of material for pimp suits, you know for those pimps alergic to mink fur and the such.

Obligatory Southpark

[trentfoley]

"pig and elephant DNA just won't splice. Haven't you ever heard that song by Loverboy?"

interesting...

[jearbear]

I'm just curious how they're going to get a female of an elephant to gestate an organism that doesn't even share the same genetic code of the species, let alone have half of it come from the mother.

Re:interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't figure out what you don't understand. It's a standard practice now. They take an elephant egg, remove the DNA, put in Mammoth DNA, sprinkle some magic, and implant the egg in a female elephant. If you want more details, look up a sheap called Dolly.

Of course the real problem is that the DNA is not likely to be in very good shape. I bet 100% of the clones would die before birth.

Re:interesting...

[Simon Field]

I don't think that's what he didn't understand.

I think he hadn't seen Scientific American, or any of the other coverage.

Save the woolly mammoth!

[WolfWithoutAClause]

You don't get a species any more endangered than the woolly mammoth!

In Soviet Russia..

[malakai]

no no, just kidding.

Seriously though, does any country want herds of 10,000 lbs mammals running around eating 400lbs of vegetation a day? Sounds like some new kind of plague, or the SUV of the animal kingdom energy source. I don't think either of those countries really need to revive that species. As for keeping it in captavity... we all know how well _that_ works. If they reconstitute that species, they better reconstitute it's least powerful predator as well.

-malakai

Re:In Soviet Russia..

[thefirelane]

If they reconstitute that species, they better reconstitute it's least powerful predator as well.

Yeah, because we all know how difficult it has been to controll the elephant populations of the world. Without any preditors, they are multiplying uncontrollably.


---Lane

Re:In Soviet Russia..

[Captain Nitpick]

If they reconstitute that species, they better reconstitute it's least powerful predator as well.

Why bother? Its most effective predator is alive and well. And now instead of spears, they have firearms.

Re:In Soviet Russia..

[PD]

Some people think it's cute to own a yorkie and a great dane, so people can laugh at the huge size difference. I think I'm going to one-up them all with my E.Coli/Mammoth combo.

Re:In Soviet Russia..

[Omkar]

Oh yes, and 10,000 lb. mammals are very easy to lose, especially when they are constantly being studied.

Re:In Soviet Russia..

[chiguy]

Somehow, I don't think we'll have a problem controlling the wooly mammoth population. What, are they going to hide under rocks and sneak into crevices? Or maybe stand underwater and use their trunks to breath like snorklers?

I enjoyed "The Way Things Work" as much as the next guy, but I don't think mammoth's are really THAT clever.

Republican Mascot

[Bowling Moses]

A stone-age mascot for stone-age thinking, or just another tribute to Strom Thurman?

Re:Republican Mascot

[Anonymous Coward]

Strom Thurman killed the last Mammoth didnt he?

and I see...

[themadpoet00]

"I see a new Republican mascot in this." and yet, for some reason, I see a Jurassic Park Sequel in the works...

Re:and I see...

[fobside]

Perhaps a solution to feeding starving nations gone wrong?

New republican mascot

[Lord Bitman]

'cause we all know what republicans love: Russians!

On the mascot question

[infonography]

Seriously, it's both hairy and bloated. It's the perfect mascot for Demoplican or is it the Repulicrat party has there isn't a big difference between two of them now.

Oh and it eats Greens. This joke is starting to get sick.

Re:On the mascot question

[xactoguy]

It's both hairy and bloated

Wouldn't that describe Windows a lot better? ;)

Darwin must be rolling in his grave.

[gklinger]

I can see the headlines now...

"Escaped mammoth goes on rampage, destroys Burger King. 18 injured, 4 dead."

Seriously though, I don't think this is a good idea. What possible purpose (save entertainment value) could be served by reviving a long extinct species? (A species which has been long extinct for a reason, I might add.)

I'm a firm believer in the Darwinian process and sometimes a little extinction is a good thing. Just because we can do something, doesn't mean we should.

I would be interested in hearing people's thoughts on this subject and if a reasonably intelligent discussion breaks out, I'll expound on my thinking.

Re:Darwin must be rolling in his grave.

[zenyu]

Seriously though, I don't think this is a good idea. What possible purpose (save entertainment value) could be served by reviving a long extinct species? (A species which has been long extinct for a reason, I might add.)

There are really two reasons, the entertainment/turist value and as an experiment. You need more reasons to get turists to go to Syberia aside from prison camps and cold weather. The experiment part is that we don't have any experience with interspecies cloning to date and there are likely to be significant hurdles. If you don't have a mammoth egg you will be trying to create a creature with part elephant and part mammoth DNA. This means there will probably be essential mitochondria missing. We'll need to figure out where we can get the missing ones, either by repairing the elephant copies that no longer function or by finding similar DNA/RNA in other creatures. There is also the question of knowing if you really are missing something. What if the creature looks like a mammoth but can't digest the syberian vegitation, is that because the vegitation has changed or because the animal is missing some enzyme?

While you might believe in extinction always happens for good reasons. In this case, there is good reason to believe it was simply the result of bad land management by the ancient human inhabitants who overhunted the creature to extinction. The had depended on it and there were probably mass starvation of humans once they eliminated their source of food, shelter, clothing, and fuel. Not only is there evidence of the overhunting, but there were isolated islands where the mammoth lived into historic times simply because they weren't hunted. But this isn't going to bring the mammoth back, very few creatures have any chance of survival once their genetic pool gets constricted to a few hundred creatures. It would take another 10,000 years for them to recover their genetic health if we had that many, and frankly that is impossible. The best we could hope for is some DNA that could help us save the Asian or African elephants if it comes to that. (The plains African elephant is in a healthy recovery in enough countries but that may change with AIDS, and we just don't know enough about the forest elephant, which we just realized was a different species last year. The Asian elephant may be genetically saved through domestication, but it's wild cousin is practically gone.) But, there are big cats that have had hardly recovered from the feline AIDS pandemic before humans started burning down the land to create farms, the techniques learned with mammoths might be able to save them genetically from extinction do to our early inefficient farming efforts. This would save us the effort of trying to successfully introduce new predators to their ranges, something we've not had great success with before.

While I'm sure ADM and the Sierra Club both have uses for interspecies cloning the main arguement for learning how to do it is just for the basic knowledge of how we work, using mammoths is not only going to give them headlines, which are essential to getting funding, but is also practical because we actually do have some from over 10,000 years ago, providing a great snapshot into the past.

Re:Darwin must be rolling in his grave.

[PurpleFloyd]

I'm a firm believer in the Darwinian process and sometimes a little extinction is a good thing. Just because we can do something, doesn't mean we should.

Except for the inconvenient little fact that it was humans who wiped out the wooly mammoth. If we hadn't hunted the things into extinction, they would probably survive quite well in areas like Siberia. Whether we should "play God" here is another ethical dilemma entirely, but I don't think Darwin would have any troubles with humans bringing back a species of animal that humans killed off.

Re:Darwin must be rolling in his grave.

[Simon Field]

Where have you been?

we don't have any experience with interspecies cloning to date

It has been widely publicized.

Re:Darwin must be rolling in his grave.

[zenyu]

we don't have any experience with interspecies cloning to date

It has been widely publicized


s/any/much

There is still a big difference between trying to clone a wolly mammoth and a the still living gaur. With the gaur you still have all the genetic material and get to chose which cells you use, and still only get a 1 in 700 chance of the creature even living to birth. With the mammoth it's more of a challenge, and that's the point. This is especially important after birth, the gaur-cow probably has most, if not all of it's immune system. Even if this is true of the mammoth it may be maladapted to today's germs, or maybe germs are maladapted to attack it, there's only one way to find out. I just don't understand how this couldn't be fascinating to anyone who still has any scientific curiosity.

Re:Darwin must be rolling in his grave.

[Willow_mt]

Great example, the Burger King...makes this a "tangible" problem for the fast-food loving crowd these days :-)

And I'm not really waiting to see my weekly Crispy Chicken Burger go down the drain :-)

Re:Darwin must be rolling in his grave.

[Simon Field]

Oh, it's certainly fascinating!

My point was that we do have experience with interspecies cloning. If the original post had replaced "any" with "much", as you suggest, I would not have been moved to comment.

Re:Darwin must be rolling in his grave.

[cookie_cutter]

very few creatures have any chance of survival once their genetic pool gets constricted to a few hundred creatures.

It depends how many hundreds. This relates to a concept called minimum viable population size. According to a site about elephant conservation:

Genetic theorists believe that at least 500 breeding animals [elephants] are needed to ensure long-term survival.

Other species seem to be able to get around with much smaller populations, less than a hundred in some cases.

Re:Darwin must be rolling in his grave.

[Anonymous Coward]

Darwin? Actually there is a good chance that we killed off the mammoths. So are current endangered species also "good things"? Is evolution really well served with a single dominant species using all land and resources?

Re:Darwin must be rolling in his grave.

[Gothmolly]

Show me the documentation that said that humans wiped them out 6000-ish years ago. Can't? Thanks. Perhaps global warming did it? Perhaps a virus? Please, don't speculate when you have no basis for it.

Kazufumi Goto Considered Dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

'Nuff said.

This is nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always known the caf at the office was serving mummified mammoth meat in their sandwiches, now they'll have fresh mummified mammoth meat to offer. A great day for science.

Man is the top predator.

[Anonymous Coward]

We're at the center of the food black hole. Didn't you see The Simpsons?

My god man, think of the Methane!

[Colonel Blimp]

If the environmentalists get in a lather over cattle farting and ruining the ozone, imagine a herd of Mammoth! As for me, I'll do the Fred Flinstone thingy and have a massive mammoth rib delivered onto my car at the drive through.

Reminded me of 'A Fish Called Wanda'

[Anonymous Coward]

Cells obtained from the well-preserved legs of a mammoth... (snip) ... -- still covered in reddish fur -- were found frozen in the soil next to a riverbank near Yakutsk.

K-K-K-Kenny's C-C-Coming to C-C-C-Clone Me!

Tourism Dollars

[Radical Rad]

The Japanese researcher hopes that the resurrected mammoths will live in a sanctuary in an uninhabited area north of the remote, frozen Kamchatka peninsula in Russia's Far East, where present conditions resemble their original habitat.

I'll bet Russia could really use the eco-tourism money that this would generate. I wouldn't mind a vacation package to see these things up close.

This guy shouldn't be cloning mammoths.

[rollie_tyler]

The team, led by Japan's Kazufumi Goto...

I hear that Goto is considered harmful.

Re:This guy shouldn't be cloning mammoths.

[hplasm]

Just one of the hazards of programming..

Mmmmm!

[floydigus]

If anyone can get me a steak of this thing, I will pay handsomely.

Re:Mmmmm!

[lkturner]

Be careful! You know what they say about eating genetically altered food. Although it could get you a spot in a Rolaids commercial - "I ate a steak made from 10,000 year old dna and got the worst case of heartburn known to man. A couple of Rolaids and I'm all better." Keith

Re:Mmmmm!

[joskay]

Time to use the old joke here....

Tastes like chicken?

If nobody else is gonna then I will

[Rhinobird]

IN SOVIET RUSSIA...mammoth clone finds you.

And she's a member of the East German Olympic swim team... (ba dum ching)

Just you wait!

[DoraLives]

Before this is all over, not only will they be reconstructing "extinct" DNA, and bringing strange things like mammoths back to life, they'll be producing purpose-built DNA for critters nobody can even imagine yet.

It's gonna get weird people. I'm tellin' ya WEIRD.

The good news is that I'll be safely dead and gone before this really takes off, but somebody is gonna have to deal with this stuff eventually, and some of it is going to be most unpleasant.

Re:Just you wait!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what endorphins are for. When reality is telling you it's better to be dead, mother nature comes in and tells you everything is alright.

It's raining fire, and you've lost your left leg to burrowing genetically modified weapons cockroaches? It's allright, just get down on that pussy and continue the species.

Re:Just you wait!

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you seen the two part "Outer Limits" where some researchers go in a space ship, and come back to earth many (hundred/thousand) years later, and earth is desolate and the remaining skeletons are of genetically altered people? (they have wings etc). Its a pretty cool episode(s)...if you don't watch it, it is a must!

BTBTBT

How will it interact with the other animals

[PepperedApple]

I'll admit I don't know much about Siberia, but I would imagine that there are at least a few other animals up there (The Siberian tiger springs to mind). I wonder how the mammoths will interact with them. Who remembers the Simpsons episode where Bart brought a frog to Australia?

Re:How will it interact with the other animals

[trikberg]

I would imagine that the interaction would be minimal. The tiger is simply too small to challenge a mammoth, and the mammoth is too slow and clumsy to harm a tiger, unless the tiger attacks. Maybe a mammoth calf could be killed by a tiger, or possibly a bear, but not unless he is separated from the mother.

Pretty much like the African elephant and lions, I guess. How mammoths affect the vegetation and the habitat of other herbivores is a different matter.

Re:How will it interact with the other animals

[ianscot]

Leaving animals alone, what will this mammoth be eating, please?

There are lots of plants that seem to be adapted for seed dissemination by "megafauna" -- the big mammoths and so on of the past. Take a look at honey locust trees -- they've got seed pods nothing in the Western Hemisphere really eats. (People don't plant the female trees nearly as often as the males, because the pods are big, plentiful, and hard to clean up after.) Or durians -- there's a fruit that's way the heck overengineered, so to speak. Turns out, where there are still elephant populations, they eat seeds similar to the honey locust's or the durian's. There are a couple of interesting pop science books that just look for plants that might be evolutionary leftovers -- based on seed type, how the populations spread, and so on.

So does Siberia really still have huge stands of those sorts of plants around? 'Cause it's going to take a heck of a lot to keep mammoths fed. Don't worry about the population-out-of-control problem; they'll die with or without big cat predators if they can't eat.

(But leave all that -- this is a sci-fi fantasy by a mad Japanese scientist. If they get out of control we'll send Mothra to clean up.)

I hope is a male Mammoth

[mlush]

Since they have somatic cells (ie normal cells not eggs or sperm) if they clone it into an elephant egg they will get an baby mammoth of the same gender and the original.

I really doubt that mammoth and elephant are more cross fertile that horse/donkey and the offspring will be sterile which means that the only way to perpetuate the species is by continued cloning.... However if the mammoth is male it could be possible to deactivate the 'male gene' (SRY in humans) and create a female mammoth.

I know a Song about that

(to Home on the Range)
Oh, give me a clone
Of my own flesh and bone
With the Y chromosome changed to X.
And when she is grown,
My very own clone,
We'll be of the opposite sex.

Chorus:
Clone, clone of my own,
With the Y chromosome changed to X.
And when we're alone,
Since her mind is my own,
She'll be thinking of nothing but sex.

how long before the NeoNoah's ark project?

[Anonymous Coward]

a large number of samples from a large number of animals, preserved and put into space.

what?

[HyperColor Underware]

In this case, there is good reason to believe it was simply the result of bad land management by the ancient human inhabitants who overhunted the creature to extinction. The had depended on it and there were probably mass starvation of humans once they eliminated their source of food, shelter, clothing, and fuel. Not only is there evidence of the overhunting, but there were isolated islands where the mammoth lived into historic times simply because they weren't hunted.

Prove it. I've seen multiple studies that shown that that dang old end-of-the-ice-age had a small hand in their extinction. As they were pushed farther and farther north into unfertile lands, not by humans, their numbers started to thin.

There's no substantial evidence to the overhunting claim. Yes, we have over-hunted species; that wasn't until the exploration ages, though. American Indians lived in peace with the wolf, the coyote, the buffalo, the moose, the elk; I fail to see why they couldn't reach an agreement with the mammoth.

Humans are part of nature *too*, dammit!

[smithmc]

Except for the inconvenient little fact that it was humans who wiped out the wooly mammoth. If we hadn't hunted the things into extinction, they would probably survive quite well in areas like Siberia.

So what? We're a part of nature, too. The mammoths ran up against nature's fair-haired boys (who may or may not have actually been fair-haired), and got their asses handed to them. How's that any different than if some species were driven to extinction by any other means, or by some other species? I'm so tired of this "nature good, humans evil" crap!

Yes, we have a mean streak a mile wide. Better hope we still have it when the Bugs come for our planet...