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Efforts To Turn Elephants Into Woolly Mammoths Are Already Underway

Posted by Soulskill on from the still-waiting-on-a-mammoth-steak dept.

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."

12 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Misguided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "furry appearance, extra layer of fat"

    Sounds like they are trying to make more Americans

  2. Bad timing? by daemonhunter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Maybe we shouldn't be making woolly mammoths just now, with climate change and all that apocalyptic-ness right around the corner.

    Just sayin'.

    1. Re:Bad timing? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Maybe we shouldn't be making woolly mammoths just now, with climate change and all that apocalyptic-ness right around the corner.

      There will be plenty of prime mammoth habitat. Although tundra is turning into taiga, plenty of formerly glaciated areas are turning into tundra. For instance, the mammoths could live in Greenland, which was completely covered with ice the last time mammoths were around, but already has some areas with commercial reindeer herds.

    2. Re:Bad timing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Lets look back at the records. As the mammoth population declined, temperature increased. Obviously we need more mammoths.

  3. Times sure are changing by tulcod · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?).

    1. Re:Times sure are changing by radtea · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Messing with life", as you call it, has an incredible potential for doing harm if approached carelessly. It doesn't take much imagination to realize this, either: synthetic infectious agents, engineered organisms that displace natural diversity, and so on.

      You've missed the GP's point, and created an instance of his observation.

      There is almost nothing we do that doesn't have "an incredible potential to do harm", and ubiquitous computational intelligence is one of the most obvious candidates for that fear going... yet hardly anyone is afraid of it.

      Ubiquitous computational intelligence (UCI) has the potential to put everyone under constant observation, including position tracking. It has the potential to serve ads to you in your sleep, monitor your caloric intake, keep track and report your alcohol consumption, your masturbation habits... everything. It's Orwell's telescreens on steroids.

      Yet the response to such things on /., while sometimes somewhat skeptical, is mostly positive. Relatively minor messing with the genome of some fairly rare creature, on the other hand, brings out the panic, with flat-out bizarre, anti-Darwinian statements like "these things died out for a reason" (posted by an AC above, who makes points similar to yours.)

      Sure messing with genomes carries risks, but they are comparable to the risks we take with all kinds of technological development, and yet for some reason people seem a lot more sensitive to them. It may not be explicitly religious, but it sure isn't rational.

      --
      Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
    2. Re:Times sure are changing by russotto · · Score: 4, Funny

      Or create species that we can't get rid of and end up replacing good species that we want.

      Not to worry, come winter.... OH SHIT THAT DOESN'T WORK WITH MAMMOTHS!

  4. I for one... by Schaffner · · Score: 4, Funny

    I for one welcome our new hybridized mammoth overlords!

    Come on, you know you wanted to post this first.

  5. Re:so... by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Umm.. 'cause we can?

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  6. Re:so... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Interesting

    why are they doing this?

    Why not? Where elephants live, they are a keystone species. They preserve the savanna by knocking down trees, and they dig waterholes that are used by many other animals. Once they are gone from a region, the entire ecosystem can drastically change. It is likely that mammoths had a similar effect in the arctic.

  7. Monsanto Mammoth by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 4, Funny

    And they sue you when it tramples your house.

  8. Crossbreeding vs. Genetic Engineering by aNonnyMouseCowered · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.