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Most of Woolly Mammoth Genome Reconstructed
geekmansworld writes "From the Washington Post, 'An international team of scientists has reconstructed more than three-quarters of the genome of the woolly mammoth using DNA extracted from balls of hair, the first time this has been accomplished for an extinct species.' Who wants a pet mammoth?"
Given that they have yet to work out how many chromosomes the woolly mammoth had, or which of the DNA features are genuine mutations, and which are artefacts caused by damage since the death of the creatures from whom DNA was extracted, there's a fair distance to go yet.
Still, I don't doubt this is a seriously fun project to be working on. I'd love to get involved.
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with those from the Tasmanian Devil ala Jurassic Park. What could possibly go wrong?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
It could be the solution of how how to maintain legacy systems in generations to come. They just need to start mapping the genes of a COBOL programmer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/science/20mammoth.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
right NOW, we can do this
apparently it would be tedious, but a number of technical hurdles have been overcome lately to the point where this is really conceivable to do, and the talk about doing it isnot theoretical, but practical
1. most recent modern genome decoders don't care that the dna is shredded into pieces
2. encapsulated in keratin (hair), the dna is not so tainted by bacterial dna like it is in bone
3. a new technique allows modifying modern elephant dna 50,000 genomic sites at a time, rather than one by one, so the proper egg can be arrived at after a few generations of reconstruction, implanted in a female elephant, and voila
this can be done, right NOW!
amazing
even more freaky: we can do the same, right now, with neanderthal!
using chimpanzee as a starting point for ethical considerations, we can also, right NOW, bring a neanderthal back to life
that's pretty freaky. these guys wouldn't be dumb. someone would have to explain to the guy that he is not the last of his species, he's an artifically reconstructed clone of a guy who died 50,000 years ago. no one of his kind exists anymore
but we revived a wooly old friend of yours too. here's a spear, happy hunting
just don't eat the dodo
or the quagga
or the irish elk
or the auroch
or the sabretooth though
really really freaky and amazing
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Do they taste good??
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Dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago. Mammoths became extinct about 10,000 years ago, though some scientists believe that there were still pockets of mammoth populations on isolated islands as late as 3500 years ago.
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Really? Considering the amount of SEO spam that's corrupted Google search results, considering the cabals, corruption and low quality of most wikipedia results, and considering that many of the world's experts on most science and technology fields ARE regularly reading slashdot, then I seriously doubt there IS ANY better place to ask a science related question than on this site.
Of course, the downside is that there are some grumpy, elitist pedants here.
I don't think you understand. The internet and slashdot was an elaborate ploy by Nivens to get more fans. He planted the ideas for the internet a long time ago and nurtured it until the web was born. He then planted the idea to create a forum for nerds. Once this was done he waited for critical mass and posted this line. Now people like me who stopped reading fiction some time ago, will see this name and investigate on the very same internet! Its rather brilliant. The only thing is that if we comply and read, then he will no longer have a use for the internet and will likely have it taken down (his purpose being completed). To prevent the destruction of this invaluable tool, I will boycott reading any further.
and with my first paranoid rant done, I am ready to start my day!
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The folks at 454 Life Sciences made reconstructing a genome from lots of little pieces pretty simple by using an algorithm that looks for common fragments (ex AAGGCTTCTA and CTTCTATCTGG probably go together to form AAGGCTTCTATCTGG).
They also pretty much pioneered modern sequencing techniques.
The news here (IMHO) is that we've been able to read the genome of an extinct animal. That is an impressive achievement, a few BP errors notwithstanding. If we have multiple copies of the genome (multiple cells), we should be able to figure out what the correct sequence is (mutations are random, and no two cells will have the same mutations). Hair is not exactly the prime target for sequencing due to its exposure to UV light (UV light wreaks havoc on DNA), but with a little work we should be able to the actual sequence.
So at the end of the day, the Nobel prize goes to the guy who can figure out how many chromosomes a mammoth had. I'd like to say "just use the number that elephants have" but 7 million years (last common ancester) is easily enough time for chromosome duplication to occur.
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The folks at 454 Life Sciences made reconstructing a genome from lots of little pieces pretty simple by using an algorithm that looks for common fragments (ex AAGGCTTCTA and CTTCTATCTGG probably go together to form AAGGCTTCTATCTGG).
Spoken like one who has never actually tried to assemble a genome sequence. Trust me, there is absolutely nothing simple about it. And while 454 Life Sciences (now a division of Roche Diagnostics) pioneered a new technology for generating raw DNA sequence data they did not pioneer the assembly process. Sequence assembly algorithms are a long and well studied problem.
They also pretty much pioneered modern sequencing techniques.
While 454 was first to the market with a next-generation sequencing platform they are currently in heavy competition with the Illumina/Solexa platform. And then there is Pacific Bioscience due to release a platform in 2010 which could eat both their lunches.