Extinct Mammoth, Coming To a Zoo Near You

Techmeology writes "Professor Akira Iritani of Kyoto University plans to use recent developments in cloning technology to give life to the currently extinct woolly mammoth. Although earlier efforts in the 1990s were unsuccessful due to damage caused by extreme cold, Professor Iritani believes he can use a technique pioneered by Dr Wakayama (who successfully cloned a frozen mouse) to overcome this obstacle. This technique will enable Professor Iritani to identify viable cell nuclei, and transfer them to egg cells of an African elephant which will carry the mammoth for a 600 day pregnancy."

Comments

Re:before you do it

[PatPending]

lighten up and have a drink

I shall have a 3,400-year-old Mesoamerican beer.

Re:I say blaze ahead fearlessly.

[wizardforce]

Some specimens were preserved well enough for people to try to take a bite. Most accounts of this are dubious at best but a few more credible accounts of having eaten mammoth flesh described it as being quite nasty. This is to be expected of a carcass that has been sitting frozen and half rotten in the Arctic since the last ice age. Now supposing that we found a few cell nuclei that looked good, the most likely outcome would be several hundred failed attempts if prior cloning experience is any indication. Genetic damage could in principle be corrected to a degree by hybridizing the broken strands with a very closely related species (in the case of dinosaurs it would be bird DNA; Ostriches to be specific, not frogs as was suggested in the Jurassic Park movies)