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Efforts To Turn Elephants Into Woolly Mammoths Are Already Underway
Jason Koebler writes: "Researchers are working to hybridize existing animals with extinct ones in order to create a '2.0' version of the animal. Using a genome editing technique known as CRISPR, Harvard synthetic biologist George Church has successfully migrated three genes, which gave the woolly mammoth its furry appearance, extra layer of fat, and cold-resistant blood, into the cells of Asian elephants, with the idea of eventually making a hybrid embryo. In theory, given what we know about both the woolly mammoth genome and the Asian elephant genome, the final product will be something that more closely resembles the former than the latter."
Shouldn't they be concentrating on turning Americans into decent people instead?
There's no reason they can't do both. Things they learn from this experiment may indeed some day be used to improve the human race. (Don't know why you specifically pick on Americans though.)
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
"furry appearance, extra layer of fat"
Sounds like they are trying to make more Americans
Maybe we shouldn't be making woolly mammoths just now, with climate change and all that apocalyptic-ness right around the corner.
Just sayin'.
why are they doing this?
Really though, we're trying to genetically resurrect an animal that died off likely due to human depredation and the end of the ice age. Now there are 7 billion MORE humans and the earth is getting warmer.
Way to jam a genetically square peg into a round hole.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
why are they doing this?
Its funded by "traditional medicine" merchants. The poachers will soon have killed off the real elephants for their ivory tusks so a replacement is needed. Might as well use mammoths rather than modern elephants since the mammoths will have larger tusks, more ivory to harvest, more "tradition medicine viagra" to sell.
Where's my elephant? - Bart Simpson
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One step closer to the egg-laying wool-milk-pig.
Shouldn't they be concentrating on turning Americans into decent people instead?
Nah; they don't have any fossil DNA from humans or other critters known to be decent.
But we can look forward to Americans who are furry and have an extra layer of fat. And this can be exported to any other part of the world where there's a market for such people.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
When Intel buys or invents some kind of a new chip process, everyone applauds. When engineers use 3D printing to save a crippled boy's life, everyone celebrates technology. Stick an arduino in a tumor and people scream in ecstasy.
But when the item of cloning comes in the news, suddenly people back away and ask what it's all good for. Because us humans are not allowed to mess with that.
Come on people. We invested thousands of years trying to understand the tricks of physics and evolution. We have now got to a stage where we can apply these tricks ourselves and see what we can make of the world.
Will it turn out for the better? Absolutely nobody knows. But telling scientists not to mess with this takes us back to the middle ages, where scientific incentives were influenced heavily by religious and cultural beliefs.
Let us show ourselves that we no longer need that. This is the time to end that society of religion and culture. Messing with life, and bringing back the extinct, those are exactly the kind of things that go against all rules of religion that we have adhered to for the past x thousands years. Humans are the new god on planet earth (and beyond?).
The next project will attempt to bring back the sabre-tooth cat.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I for one welcome our new hybridized mammoth overlords!
Come on, you know you wanted to post this first.
Shouldn't they be concentrating on turning Americans into decent people instead?
Nah; they don't have any fossil DNA from humans or other critters known to be decent.
But we can look forward to Americans who are furry and have an extra layer of fat. And this can be exported to any other part of the world where there's a market for such people.
Oh yeah, because the average bearded fat-ass is so desirable today to the rest of the world.
Americans cornered the market on obesity. If there was value there, believe me we would have capitalized on it years ago.
I think you've watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail too many times.
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Watching Monty python too many times is an asymptote i can only get infinitely close to watching it too many times
Just let me know when I can buy a mammoth steak for the BBQ. Sounds tasty. :P
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Actually, saudi arabia, kuwait, & UAE have higher rates of obesity.
>tfw america isn't even #1 in being fat anymore
sadfrog.jpg
Maybe they should ask the elephants if this is a good idea before they strap on a wool coat to their DNS.
For Global Warming!
We're experiencing a global warming trend, and you want to resurrect a species of large mammal that was adapted to cold climates?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
And they sue you when it tramples your house.
What you're talking about is basically natural crossbreeding, not the type of genetic engineering that involves modifying the DNA itself of an organism. By "natural" I include such mechanical techniques as artificial insemination, extracting the sperm and eggs from mature adults and mixing them up. With natural crossbreeding you get the whole shebang, you let nature decide which genes become active and dominant. In theory, with DNA level genetic engineering you can specify which traits you want to get. I'm not saying this is a good thing, only that you can potentially get more control by "editing" (the word used in the article) the genes that simpy mixing the semen and egg of two different species.
I think they should focus on breeding stupidity, viciousness, greed, and arrogance out of Europeans first.
If you look at the past few centuries of world history, these European "qualities" are clearly far bigger problems for the work than American "indecency".
For the first pot head to show up in a home-spun woolly mammoth sweater.
Or Woolly Shit!! This should be interesting. Hybrid walking giants!
They're already working on the solution of a runaway mammoth population:
http://news.nationalgeographic...
Great! The second use of this knowledge: furries!
I do remember reading reprints of this quite prescient April 1st article 30 years ago.
http://www.textfiles.com/humor...
It's been done. They called the result "Canadians". Yaz
This is why you start with Mammoth. It's not like you are going to misplace them, or walk out our BSL2 with one stuck to our shirt. And we know they are habitat limited and that we can hunt them to extinction.
But seriously, we genetically engineer lab mice and rats all the time, even hybridising them with human genes, and no-one bats an eyelash. This is the same process, just using elephants with specific mammoth genes.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
[Flintstones] Can't wait for that mammoth burger.
They are trying something easy first.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
However that is not the case when we blindly throw genes from one species into another. Just because we have the ability to do something doesn't mean that we have the knowledge to use it appropriately.
Except the technology being used here is the same as is routinely used to genetically engineer lab animals with genes from other species, even (and especially) human genes, in order to explore gene functionality.
The only difference is that it's using elephants with mammoth genes, instead of rats, mice, pigs, dogs, monkeys, etc, with human or jellyfish genes. It even sounds like they've mapped the function of the first three genes they've chosen, and they've started in a cell culture to test their technique. Wow, it's almost like they're being scientific about it.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
We're suffering enough over here, no need to rub it in.
So what you are saying is that it cannot be done?
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How do these experiments benefit mankind, other than manufacturing a new zoo attraction?
-Bryan
"furry appearance, extra layer of fat"
Sounds like they are trying to make more Americans
pretty sick burn... We also want to transplant the furry appearance to our scalps, no more male pattern balding.
Didn't we learn a lesson from this from a movie once?
Americans have fat because they have wealth.
The French are thin because they are poor.
Is poverty so desirable to the world?
The geneticist works quietly at some titrations, making small adjustments and jotting down notes in his notebook, it's late, the geneticist hot caught up in a task and lost track of time. Suddenly, Jeff Goldblum appears behind him and gently places his hands on the scientists shoulders. "Oops, didn't mean to frighten you." He says as his right hand snakes down into the pocket of his black leather jacket. He extracts a small dropper filled with water, slowly raises the dropper just above the geneticists hand and squeezes out a single drop. Which rolls down. And then another in the same spot, which rolls down a different route. "Life finds a way." he whispers and disappears as quickly as he arrived. The geneticist chuckles to himself as wipes off his hand, he'd heard of other geneticists getting "Jurassic Parked," but just had not believed that Goldblum would have that kind of free time.
...engineer an ape by modifying human DNA to have hair all over its body. Sounds like pretty much the same idea.
Smilodon (or similar genera)? Kewl! that's enough to make me amble off to RTFA.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"