Cloning Mammoths

Anonym Feigling writes "For your consideration... An article over at the New Zealand Herald discusses some of the challenges a japanes team faces as it attemps to develop a system to create a clone from 20,000 year-old mammoth tissue samples discovered in Siberia. It seems to me that shortly after death, any animal's/plant's "cellular repair mechanisms" (for the lack of a better...) will fail, and thus the probability of finding a single cell with perfectly intact DNA from which to create a clone is pretty well zero. Interesting stuff, but it seems that practical considerations (think code rot) would make it difficult."

Comments

Don't always need an intact DNA

[WolfWithoutAClause]

You can probably take two different, damaged copies of the DNA and PCR amplify them up, and generate a protein to stick them back together in the right way. It would be fiddly as hell, but in principle you can do it perfectly.

Once you have an intact copy of the DNA you can clone with it.

Alternatively, take the fragments of mammoth DNA and sequence them, then run the sequenced DNA through a DNA 'printer'. These machines exist- you feed in the DNA sequence on CD rom and out pops the actual DNA you want. It might take years or even decades(!) but it would certainly be possible in principle.

Re:Huh?

[ravenousbugblatter]

It is conceivable that there are cells that would have DNA significantly intact in order to use for cloning. Cells will not begin to undergo cell suicide or necrosis immediately upon death -- they will continue to function for while, waiting for the release of chemicals from the liver and other funs places that will begin to autodigest the body. Cells could also potentially hang otu for a while until they simply run out of glucose (energy source). SO, it's conceivable that a cell very near the surface (for example an epithelial cell, which have been used for cloning before) of the animal could be humming along just fine after the mammoth croaked, and because it was cold there the cell could move into a state of inactivity (there's a reason scientists always carry those buckets of ice around). This cell could then possibly be frozen with it's DNA still relatively intact (keep in mind, even in normal, healthy cells there are estimated to be thousands of single-strand, and even some double-strand, nicks at any given time) and DNA does very well when frozen. So it is possible...but I doubt it will happen any time soon though.

Re:Sorry to be negative and all

[TCQuad]

a single breeding pair does not a healthy, stable population make.

Actually, this may not be true in all cases. Cheetahs, for instance, have had two points in their history at which the population has gone down to a single breeding pair, as determined by population genetics.

Of course, now it would be almost impossible for cheetahs to survive a third catastrophe of that magnitude, due to their low genetic variability, but it is possible for a single mating pair to create a new population.