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Scientists Optimistic About Getting a Mammoth Genome Complete Enough To Clone
Clark Schultz writes The premise behind Jurassic Park just got a bit more real after scientists in South Korea said they are optimistic they can extract enough DNA from the blood of a preserved woolly mammoth to clone the long-extinct mammal. The ice-wrapped woolly mammoth was found last year on an island off of Siberia. The development is being closely watched by the scientific community with opinion sharply divided on the ethics of the project.
I don't understand... what would be unethical about this?
Ethics ?!? Hey, this could be better than bison burger.
I hope something comes of this.
...Can we do this cloning at Fukishima? I hear it's quiet this time of year.
I'm curious about why one would consider this unethical? That nature had her shot and declared these animals unfit for habitation on the earth, perhaps? That this could open the door to more widespread tampering with genetics? We interfere with the "natural order" all the time, most especially when it comes to our own comfort and survival. I'm sort of curious why people would suddenly start worrying about bringing extinct animals back to life. I'll admit I haven't given this a lot of thought yet, but my initial reaction is that it seems like a fascinating opportunity if we can pull it off.
Maybe someone that opposes this on ethical grounds could enlighten me.
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North Korea just anounced they've already cloned one (and T-Rex as well).
Letter To Iran
Oh, the powerful nature of learning from such an exercise could reveal so much.
Also, nature versus nurture would be opened up for one massive peer review.
Thank you for that note and lets hope they succeed soon!
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I really need to know if mammoths are tasty.
Plus, Brundlefly, they're not carnivorous. No problemo.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
For Fuck's sake.
what about raptors? now does any have some dragon DNA?
Four more years!
Mammoths? 4.5 thousand years ago. Dinosaurs? Upwards of 66 MILLION+. Compared to the dinosaurs, any dead mammoths we may find have barely stopped breathing. But what the heck, who cares if it makes for a good headline?
But seriously, it's like installing Linux on a 1990's Palm Pilot. Sure, you can probably pull it off, but wtf are you going to do with it after you give yourself a pat on the back? Is it really worth the investment? Can't you be spending your time doing something more productive?
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
The ethical issues here revolve around spending time and resources re-creating extinct creatures when we are making new species extinct at record rates, not concerns about the rights of individual animals.
We were around while these beasts roamed the earth, and may have had a hand in their disappearance to begin with. Given that our ancestors evolved to eat these animals, my personal theory is that Mammoth meat is perfect, and thus it's likely to be the tastiest meat there is. I for one, am looking forward to cloning enough of these that we could grow them for meat.
While it may have an impact on the currently existing flora and fauna up there, I don't think there's much competition for its particular ecological niche.
I assume there are tons more when aggregated across global subspecies of ferret.
I assume there are tons more when aggregated across global subspecies of ferret.
(Caveat: I'm not in my area of expertise. I happen to know someone who knows a lot about ferrets, but I can only parrot what I think I remember her saying.) If you consider the entire weasel family, yes, but of the species (subspecies?) that is considered "ferret", my understanding is that there is only one variety (the black footed ferret?) that still exists in the wild. I'm told that among other things, domestic ferrets have lost their homing instinct, and get lost very easily outdoors.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
It seems surreal that we are talking about resurrecting Mammoths while their close genetic kin are still in a pretty harsh decline. Perhaps we should be trying to store sequences of good cross section of the remaining elephants so that in some future century we can dust off the old thumb drives and bring them back with enough genetic diversity to properly re-introduce them somewhere.
Much like Walter White's transition to Heisenberg, they grow a beard to delineate themselves as the evil versions of 'normal' elephants.
That might throw a spanner in the works of all you sickos hanging out to see what it tastes like.
But I think we all know it's going to turn out like this.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
That's relevant to, but not the full story of, the ethical controversy over human cloning, but we're talking about mammoths. I don't think anyone's proposing that we insert mammoth DNA into human eggs.
Sounds like a military project. (Not all militaries would be willing to try this, but some certainly would.)
according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_(sheep) (under section called Legacy) cloning of an extinct animal has already been done, a Pyrenean ibex, extinct since 2000.
I guess the Spanish king sponsors this effort?
The idea of this project being subject to "ethics" is one exclusive to conservative-minded Westerners. Progress goes a lot smoother when you don't have to answer to a bunch of brainwashed bible-thumpers.
Woolly mammoths didn't evolve until 60-someodd million years AFTER the K-T event which KILLED THE DINOSAURS! So just how exactly is cloning a frozen corpse going to help us clone something which has been petrified into ROCK over millions of years?
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Wrong. Religious conservatives are concerned with human embryos. The Bible gives man dominion over the animals. It's the "Animal Rights" and other such emos that see a problem here.
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A team called Revive & Restore is in the process of cloning the extinct passenger pigeon.
They're getting close to finishing the passenger-pigeon DNA sequence. That's the easy part though, next they will have to inscribe the genome into a living cell and produce a viable embryo, and from that a living offspring.
Keep in mind the passenger pigeon only became extinct in 1914, which is fairly recent compared to the wooly mammoth.
I'm curious about why one would consider this unethical? That nature had her shot and declared these animals unfit for habitation on the earth, perhaps?
Actually I understood that early humans had an large role in causing mammoths to go extinct. So, if anything, wouldn't it be unethical not to reverse the damage we caused? This is our first chance to revive a species which we probably caused to go extinct in the first place.
Given that our ancestors evolved to eat these animals
We evolved in Africa which was not known for its large Woolly Mammoth population. While we did eat them, perhaps even to extinction, I don't think you can say that we specifically evolved to eat mammoths. It was more an opportunistic relationship: they were large chunks of fresh meat wandering through a frozen landscape and we were hungry.
Could be a really neat/useful experiment. With all the stuff coming out lately about microorganisms in the gut and viral/bacterial strands mixed with mammalian DNA I've been curious if it's all environment (what the animal is exposed to and what it's internal system produces for any potential gut bacteria to flourish) or if there's some kind of a feedback mechanism utilizing retroviruses enacting on surrounding bacteria after interacting with the animal or straight synthesis of bacterial and viral organisms in the host mammal. If they pull it off and map the surrogate + clone gut biome in full it could lead to some really interesting discoveries.
Well I know for a fact that they can live on their own in the walls of your house just fine! I came out one night to feed on my brother. Nasty little bloodsucker!
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
That wasn't the case with our ferret. She would run all over the place and end up right back at her pen when it was time to sleep (which was most of the time).
Hell house cats are about as tame as they come, right? But cats turn feral after a certain amount of time without a fixed home. Hell I had a cat, since birth, that always ran off at night in Korea but would walk down the street, roof top to roof top, as I walked home from work then sit in the front door waiting for me to come in the house. When we moved to the US, he got one look at "wilderness" and disappeared, to be seen only twice more over the next year. He had clearly turned feral but, from the look of him, was no worse off.
Anecdotal? Sure, but I think we make a lot of assumptions about things that we believe without having any scientific basis to back up our beliefs. I think you'd find, if you dumped a bunch of ferrets in the wild, plenty will find their way home, others will survive just fine in the wild and make new homes, and still others will not survive. Pretty much the way it is in "the real world" already. No matter how much we try, we're not taking the "wild" completely out of any domesticated species as a whole. There will always be individuals that retain their instincts and natural capabilities. Enough to keep the species alive? That probably depends upon the species.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
If it was our ancestors that hunted them to extinction, if we have the technology, wouldn't it be more ethical for us to bring them back?
Besides that, just like the challenge of going to the moon yielded many of the discoveries that lay at the foundation of the
technologies we take for granted today, couldn't bringing back the wooly mammoth also yield discoveries that could serve us
in other ways?
Besides, I doubt they'd resurrect the animals in numbers greater than to simply study them anyway...
Mammoths are just elephants with long hair, that they needed to survive in the ice ages. If they were around today they would be extremely uncomfortable and hot, and if you had some in a zoo or somewhere you'd have to keep them in an air conditioned area. If you kept them outside or in the wild then you'd have to majorly trim their hair... and that would basically just give you and elephant again. So I don't really see the point of all this. Give us a sabre-toothed tiger instead.
Wasn't that a Frank Zappa album?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Better to use the money and effort to save elephants from the ivory poachers.
Mammoth burgers, hells yes!
Recent studies have elucidated the importance of a creature's microbiome (especially gut flora) to its digestive capabilities and overall health. How healthy can an animal whose microbiome is extinct be (unless it inherits a suitable microbiome from its surrogate elephant mother)?
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I'm all for it. And since this seems to be the right venue, let me pitch you my mammoth cloning idea.
Not only do I think we should bring back the mammoth, I know where to put them once we do. Yellowstone National Park. Plenty of space. I think the climate would suit the mammoth. And it would be tremendous boost to the tourist attraction of the place.
Also, I would really love to see a mammoth forging through the deep snow, emerging majestically from the icy fog.
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. . . the rest of humanity can't give two shits to protect other species from going extinct.
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Guess we could have resurrected those cute fuzzy (green?) lizzards!