Slashdot Mirror
Woolly Mammoth On Verge of Resurrection, Scientists Reveal (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The woolly mammoth vanished from the Earth 4,000 years ago, but now scientists say they are on the brink of resurrecting the ancient beast in a revised form, through an ambitious feat of genetic engineering. Speaking ahead of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Boston this week, the scientist leading the "de-extinction" effort said the Harvard team is just two years away from creating a hybrid embryo, in which mammoth traits would be programmed into an Asian elephant. "Our aim is to produce a hybrid elephant-mammoth embryo," said Prof George Church. "Actually, it would be more like an elephant with a number of mammoth traits. We're not there yet, but it could happen in a couple of years." The creature, sometimes referred to as a "mammophant," would be partly elephant, but with features such as small ears, subcutaneous fat, long shaggy hair and cold-adapted blood. The mammoth genes for these traits are spliced into the elephant DNA using the powerful gene-editing tool, Crispr. Until now, the team have stopped at the cell stage, but are now moving towards creating embryos -- although, they said that it would be many years before any serious attempt at producing a living creature.
The only bit I don't quite understand is why they don't piece together some completely mammoth DNA, and try to grow that in an artificial uterus? What would the additional complications be, beyond hacking together an elephant-mammoth hybrid like they propose?
When do we get our brontosaurus burgers?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
As I read ion all the other articles, the result will be a hairy elephant with a beard, that's all.
The answer is likely in there: http://news.nationalgeographic...
The relevant bit is "At that time African elephants branched off first. Then just 440,000 years later, a blink of an eye in evolutionary time, Asian elephants and mammoths diverged into their own separate species."
until they break out of their cages and go berserk.
But if you survive you can write your memoirs and they'll make it into a major motion picture.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Zoo? The scientists are going to *eat* it!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
National Geographic reported that extinction rates are 1,000 times faster due to human activity[1]. So I predict that the woolly mammoth will be the first species to go extinct twice. #f1RST
[1]: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/05/140529-conservation-science-animals-species-endangered-extinction/
Different people, different interests. If you would rather help existing species, go right ahead.
It's news for NERDS dude. If you don't think this is at least interesting you can hand in your nerd card.
until they break out of their cages and go berserk.
A good place for Pleistocene Park would be one of those large uninhabited islands off the Siberian coast. It would promote tourism in a region that badly neeeds it.
Hey I have an idea. Why don't we create a park on an island...we could call it Jurassic Mammoth Park or something...where mammoths roam free and you could go on safari tours to see them. What could possibly go wrong with that.
Not that unethical - just a necessary step towards merging electric eels with sharks. How else are they going to power the lasers?
The creature, sometimes referred to as a "mammophant,"
Way to waste an opportunity.
"Heffalump" FTW!
sudo ergo sum
Not on Sundays.
I'd rather read about genetic modifications of mammoth DNA and elephants to try to reintroduce a species than see yet another phone/tablet/phablet story personally.
There's more to be geeky about than just programming languages. Biology is cool. CRISPR is cool (and slightly scary).
But ok, lets talk about how awesome vi is. Emacs is for losers. Am I doing it right?
The technique they are using — CRISPR — is what we just discussed as applicable to humans. If splicing mammoth into elephant yields a viable organism, some day it may be possible to splice useful features of Neanderthals and other extinct human species, or even apes into humans — yielding strength, resistance to diseases, or adaptability to uncomfortable conditions (think Antarctica or even Mars).
Eugenics became a dirty word because of Nazis, who would improve humanity by killing off the "degenerates". But there is nothing wrong with improving the human stock per se... For example, Heinlein in "Beyond This Horizon" describes a society, where this was done successfully — while also explaining, how it can be done (very) wrong as well.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
That's very interesting. Among other things, it implies that Mammoths and Asian elephants are closer related to each other than either is to African elephants (but not by much).
Another way of putting this is that its probably more accurate to consider Mammoths as just another species of Elephant.
There used to (in historic times) be another relatively small North African Elephant species (Hannibal used them in his war with Rome), that is also now extinct. There were quite recently lots of island-based pygmy elephants and pygmy mammoths too. If you could bring back a Mammoth, those might be equally recoverable.
While the science around this is indeed interesting, there are ethical questions beyond just those involved with gene editing. Specifically around if it is appropriate to risk reduction of one endangered population of animals to attempt to revive an extinct one.