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.

Comments

huh?

[Charliemopps]

I don't understand... what would be unethical about this?

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand... what would be unethical about this?

Forcing an Asian elephant to be a "mother" to another species, one that might harm her.

Forcing solitary existence on what appears to be a highly social species.

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, yeah, but you wouldn't be using a human zygote for this. Seems like only the 3 craziest members of PETA in the world would have an ethical problem with this...

Re:huh?

[StikyPad]

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.

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting anonymously since I've voted on other posts: I don't think 99% of people would care that non-human cloning it erases a potential life. We end actual animal lives all the time for food, sport, or simply out of carelessness.

Concerns about cross-species surrogacy (that could kill the mother, a species with problems of its own), creating social animals with no living members of the species to acculturate it, and of course, spending millions of dollars that could (arguably) be better spent preserving extant species all seem like more likely ethical concerns.

Re:huh?

[Charliemopps]

That's done daily by farmers everywhere. Where do you think mules come from?

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have been misinformed.

1. Commercial laying houses do NOT have roosters running around with the hens. This would be pointless and uneconomical. When you buy a dozen eggs from the store, there is a zero percent chance that they will be fertilized.

2. My family eats fertilized eggs daily. I cannot remember the last time I saw a speck of blood in an egg.

Blood specks have nothing to do with the egg being fertilized.

Re: huh?

[davidrgreenberg]

It's not blood. It's a protein spot. It's more common in brown eggs because they're harder to screen with a backlight to weed out those eggs, although the spot is harmless.

Unethical?

[Dutch Gun]

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.

Re:Unethical?

[xigxag]

Not saying I agree, but from a link in the article:

Dr Herridge questioned "whether or not the justifications for cloning a mammoth are worth the suffering, the concerns of keeping an elephant in captivity, experimenting on her, making her go through a 22-month pregnancy, to potentially give birth to something which won't live, or to carry something which could be damaging to her. And all of those aspects... I don't think that they are worth it; the reasons just aren't there."

Re:Unethical?

[Areyoukiddingme]

- Intentionally creating a life from incomplete DNA which may not end up producing a complete, healthy, and happy animal.

The whole point of the article is they're optimistic about extracting enough samples to get the complete DNA, so that's a non-issue.

- Then using that animal for an endless barrage of scientific testing throughout its life.

You phrased that to be inflammatory, while ignoring the realities of the situation. Elephants in zoos aren't subjected to some ridiculously invasive regimen and a mammoth wouldn't be either. They are very large, very powerful animals. You don't casually stick a needle into one of them. Invasive testing is something you keep to a minimum, because the animal is in a position to object when it's conscious, and sedating it is difficult and dangerous. So the "endless barrage" in question means a whole lot of stool and urine samples, and not so much with the vivisection.

- Creating an animal that normally lives a social life and forcing upon it total isolation from its species.

One hopes they would make more than one. And if they don't, the question becomes, how accepting of visibly different but roughly the right shape members is an elephant herd? If the answer is "accepting", then that's no problem. (And I'm curious to know the answer to that question.)

- Forcing an elephant to give birth to another species and all the potential health/safety and emotional problems that could cause for the elephant.

Either you're underestimating the power of motherly love, and she will accept her offspring regardless of its appearance, or you overestimate the attachment elephants have for their offspring, and she will reject an apparently "defective" offspring without trauma. I suspect she would accept her offspring. Baby elephants are actually quite hairy, as babies go, and get less hairy as they get older. If instead her baby gets furry, I don't think she'll object. As for health/safety, she'd be the best cared for pregnant elephant in history.

Unless there's real, valuable science that can be done that will justify the potential traumas that could be caused, it seems like a dumb idea.

This strikes me as one of those experiments that falls into the category of "we don't know; let's try it and find out." Is it real, valuable science? We have no idea. We might learn any number of things about genetics, gestation, fetal development, and a raft of other complicated biological things. Or we might learn nothing much. We won't know until we try it. I suspect developing elephant ultrasound will be useful elsewhere, if nothing else. Somebody will learn something, even if it's just engineering.

obligatory Jurassic Park quote:

[origin2k]

Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.

--- Dr. Ian Malcolm

That's nothing

[DumbSwede]

North Korea just anounced they've already cloned one (and T-Rex as well).

Re:Ethics?

[The Grim Reefer]

I hear wooly mammoth is a little gamy.

20,000 years of freezer burn will do that I suppose.

Re:I can see the curiosity aspect..

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Can't you be spending your time doing something more productive?

Consider that any successful experience in cloning anything adds to our knowledge base about cloning. By perfecting cloning, we can do a lot more than just bring back extinct species. We could, for example, grow entirely new organs cloned from your body to replace damaged or failing ones, organs that could be transplanted into you without fear of tissue rejection. Further, the practice of being able to reliably modify cells at the genetic level can lead to all sorts of other benefits in medicine, biology, and even far-flung fields as nanotechnology when you consider the scale you have to work in.

The whole "can't you spend your time/money better" argument is pretty short-sighted when you consider the enormous ancillary benefits. It's like saying why bother going to the moon when you can spend money on Earth. But without that impetus, we might not have the very computers and Internet you're currently using to read this post, or lasers to correct your vision, or lightweight, strong materials used to make the planes you fly on, or the fuel cells used to power zero-emission vehicles, or...you get the idea.

Stop thinking in checkers. Think chess. It's not the current move that matters; it's the move you make three moves from now that wins the game.

Re:Ethics?

[roc97007]

I want me a dodo. Apparently they were so tasty, the islanders couldn't bear to leave a single one living.

I don't think so. According to the wiki, it probably wasn't humans eating the dodo to extinction (the meat was described as "tasteless" and pigeon was considered a superior game bird) but introducing predators (pigs, cats) to an environment where there hadn't been any before.

As I understand it, the problem with the dodo is that there aren't any frozen carcasses from which to get intact DNA. I heard a carcass was found in a cave not too long ago, and was more preserved, but last I heard it was up in the air as to whether it could be done.

As to the ethics, why not? We breed animals to be pets, how is this different? I'm told that there is only one species of ferret in the world, for instance, that can still fend for itself in the wild.

Re:I can see the curiosity aspect..

[roc97007]

Sure, I get that. I guess I'm just wondering why a Mommoth, as opposed to, I dunno, a human, is so valuable in a cloning exercise.

Part of the answer may be, you can make a lot of mistakes cloning a mammoth without people getting too upset.

Elephants?

[Moof123]

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.

Re:Exciting!

[Dave Emami]

I hope something comes of this.

I predict at least one South Korean cavalry division mounted on war-mammoths.