South Korean Scientists Prepare To Clone Wooly Mammoth

An anonymous reader writes "Last year Russian researchers discovered a well-preserved mammoth thigh bone and announced plans to clone a mammoth from the bone marrow within — and they just signed a deal with South Korea's Sooam Biotech Research Foundation to bring the project to fruition. The Sooam scientists plan to implant the nucleus of a woolly mammoth cell into an elephant egg in order to to create a mammoth embryo, which would then be placed in an elephant womb. 'This will be a really tough job,' Soaam reasearcher Hwang In-Sung said, 'but we believe it is possible because our institute is good at cloning animals.'" Not to be confused with a similar mammoth effort at mammoth-cloning at Kyoto University.

Comments

Mass production

[MichaelSmith]

Knowing the Koreans they will be turning out a million units a year starting in 2014.

Re:Mass production

[philip.paradis]

That would be a truly mammoth production level.

Re:Mass production

[Anonymous Coward]

And the first questions after they have successfully cloned a mammoth by the people will be, "How does it taste?"
 

Re:Mass production

[Ihmhi]

They had better be careful. Things could get a bit hairy.

Re:Mass production

[Mitchell314]

*tusk* *tusk*
No need to be condescending; the Koreans know what they're doing.

Re:Mass production

[thomst]

And the first questions after they have successfully cloned a mammoth by the people will be, "How does it taste?"

And the answer will be, "Like chicken!"

Re:Mass production

[shutdown -p now]

And even the Russians who sometimes enjoy a piece of slightly rotting meat

Um, what? I'm a Russian, and I most certainly don't enjoy rotten meat, regardless of "slightly" and "sometimes".

Giants

[Anonymous Coward]

Next we'll need to genetically engineer giants to herd these mammoths...

At Last...

[FatdogHaiku]

Knowing the Koreans they will be turning out a million units a year starting in 2014.

I will FINALLY be able to get those giant, car tipping Bar-B-Que ribs Fred Flintstone caused me to lust after for so very long!

Re:At Last...

[FireFury03]

You bastard, you made me google "Flinstone porn", and now I dearly regret it. Fucker!

Read that as "nearly regret it"...

This is good to hear considering...

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

the elephant might go extinct like the rhino due to poachers. At least we'll have mammoths. >.>

I guess the optimist would go,"If we have the tech to do it for mammoths, we can get back other extinct life forms."

Mother of different species?

[hawguy]

How well can an elephant's womb support an animal of a different species? Even human babies born to human mothers are in danger if something as simple as the mother's Rh factor is different than the baby's. Surely implanting an animal of one species into a completely different species will run into problems with rejection?

Re:Mother of different species?

[physicsphairy]

There's not really any way to know for sure without trying it. But there are a few reasons to be optimistic. We're talking genetically very similar animals (consider all the viable hybrids which occur naturally), and, when you think about it, the womb is a controlled environment. Once you have a highly evolved gestation system in place, selective pressure will tend to favor the existing system. (Look how similar embryos are, even across genetically distant species.)

If it doesn't work, well, now you figure out where things went wrong and try again. Hopefully you at least have a new batch of cell nuclei to work with.