Frozen Mice Cloned

m0rphin3 writes "Japanese scientists have cloned mice whose bodies were frozen for as long as 16 years and said on Monday it may be possible to use the technique to resurrect mammoths and other extinct species. Could we finally see Jurassic Park become a reality, or perhaps use this for colonizing other galaxies?"

Comments

Not that interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Drop some DNA or a mouse in liquid nitrogen or even a -80 freezer and it will last indefinitely. Cloning is interesting but length of storage isn't.

Re:Not that interesting

[mr_mischief]

The point is that they didn't do anything special to protect the cells against the damage of freezing. They took a mouse that was frozen just the way an animal would be frozen after death in the wild and worked around the damage freezing causes. The current cloning processes all use an intact healthy cell from an adult. This proves that's not necessary.

michael crichton just died

[Digitus1337]

It's interesting that you mention this; http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/05/print/main4575403.shtml .

Michael Crichton died today

[kentrel]

RIP http://news.google.co.uk/news/url?sa=t&ct=uk/0-0&fp=491182f120c62f7f&ei=XuERScjTB4LAwgGmqZTzBA&url=http%3A//www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/05/print/main4575403.shtml&cid=0&usg=AFQjCNHcr8G0ar1Zy3zr0YIYCdj0c4I2iw

Re:Brilliant!

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Breaking news! Michael Crichton, the author of the blockbuster science-fiction novel "Jurassic Park," and winner of an Academy Technical Achievement Award has died. He was 66. Truly an American icon.

Re:That juicy t-bone steak

[Sloppy]

Sorry, not my position, was just trying to clarify theirs.

Crichton died today, pre-Jurassic Park technology

[The Fun Guy]

If only Michael Crichton could have lived to see it all come true.

Bring on the velociraptors!

Re:Not quite.

[hey!]

Well, you have to make a distinction between what an individual "needs" to survive and what a species "needs" to support certain evolutionary trends.

There is seems to be considerable scientific opinion to the effect that meat eating played an important role in making the large brained, linguistically gifted and tool making species H. sapiens possible. However, this doesn't mean that individual humans or pre-humans have ever "needed" meat to survive, or that eating meat to any degree was more "healthy" as we'd define it.

Humans in primitive conditions no doubt ate opportunistically. If you're a primitive person out hunting, you aren't going to ignore a bush full of berries because today's hunting day. Edible herbs probably went straight into the mouth without a second thought. So I expect people were constantly grazing on plants. On the other hand, they'd also gorge themselves on meat when given a chance -- check out the huge prehistoric shell middens they left behind. And of course, when you kill a mammoth, you'd better have a refrigerator for all that meat.

And, of course, humans didn't have refrigerators; they just became extremely adept at turning those meat calories into fat. They had to store calories, to support their very thermally expensive brains.

A modern person, of course, can graze on herbs and roots all the time. It's probably healthier for him too, although regular, small inclusions of meat in his diet do no harm and simplify getting the amino acids he needs.