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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?"
And I thought cats were disgusting...
Blank until
Just download god's genome checker.
[x] Automatically fix chromosome errors
[x] Scan for and attempt to recover bad base pairs
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Do they taste good??
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
The mammoth mitochondrial genome was decoded a few years ago.
Mito DNA is much easier to sequence from old samples due to the fact that for every cell which contains one copy of the nuclear genome, there are thousands of copies of the mitochondrial genome.
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.
Your post advocates a
(x) technical ( ) religious ( ) time travel
approach to resurrecting extinct species. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws.)
( ) Possibility of creating mutant monsters
( ) We are defenceless against brute force attacks
(x) People will not put up with giant stampy animals roaming about
(x) The police will not put up with giant stampy animals roaming about
( ) Requires too much cooperation from organised religion
(x) Requires immediate total cooperation from government regulators
( ) Time travel isn't possible
( ) Time travel into the past isn't possible without a wormhole which was (is) in the past already
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
(x) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(x) Lack of centrally controlling authority for mad scientists
(x) We haven't even sequenced the whole genome
(x) Being sued by Michael Crichton's estate
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird old animals
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird old animals
( ) Huge existing animals occupying the evolutionary niche of the old ones
(x) Susceptibility of DNA to damage
(x) We don't even know how many chromosomes it should have
( ) Unavailability of any living relatives to carry the foetus to term
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
(x) Religions will argue about playing god
(x) Pointlessness of an animal adapted for an ice age during a period of global warming
( ) What's dead should stay dead
(x) There are better things to spend the money on
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!
it's = it is
its = belonging to it
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.