On Bringing Back the Dead
...woolly mammoths, that is.
I recently read the following two articles:
Japanese clone mouse from frozen cell, aim for mammoths
Woolly mammoth task: Extinct critter's DNA mapped
To summarize, the first article shows for the first time that it is possible to clone a dead animal whose body had been preserved in ice (for 16 years, not quite 100,000 -- true). The second article, scientists have reported that most (80%) of the genome of the woolly mammoth has been sequenced. (The trick was to extract from mammoth hair -- hairballs, actually -- which is less likely to have been contaminated or decomposed by bacteria.)
Together, these studies really do open the door to the bringing back of an extinct animal.
The problem with the idea of the Jurassic Park books and movies was that we do not have cells from animals related to dinosaurs. In the books and film, I believe they used frog cells as the next best thing.
For those of you less scientifically inclined, cloning requires more than just the full DNA of an animal; it requires a living cell from the same -- or almost the same -- species of animal. This is because there are other things in a cell besides nuclear DNA that are required for cell life, growth, and division. In short, you are not just a result of nuclear DNA from your mother and father. You also gain mitochondrial DNA solely from your mother as well as the initial proteins found in her egg cells required to translate and transcribe your DNA as your embryo grew.
Now frog and dinosaur egg cells are not likely to be that similar, so Jurassic park is not likely to happen -- until we have the technology and knowledge to synthetically recreate dinosaur egg cells from scratch. However, woolly mammoths are very closely related to modern day elephants, such that some scientists want to skip cloning altogether and just cross-breed mammoth sperm -- assuming they could extract it -- with elephant eggs and make elephant-mammoth hybrids. But it is probably going to be easier to clone -- to take an elephant egg cell, suck out its nuclear DNA, and pump in mammoth DNA -- than to cross-breed.
Even easier might be to just genetically engineer a modern elephant into a mammoth by making multiple DNA mutations to turn back on the "woolly" genes. Having the genomes of both animals would allow for this relatively easily.
I am so excited by this, because I've always been bummed out that woolly mammoths were extinct before I was born. How can you not like a fuzzy elephant?
And it doesn't have to be just mammoths. We could bring back the dodo or help out the Tasmanian devil.
Why do this?
Why not?
No, it isn't necessarily (directly) valuable to do in the sense of benefiting mankind, but it is certainly fun. Science is allowed to be fun sometimes. And the techniques developed in doing this could be very helpful or lead to more beneficial discoveries.
To argue that it is foolish to mess with the natural order of things is a weak argument, as everyone does that every single day. (If you want to live naturally, strip off your clothes and abandon your houses and go eat roots.)
Most people think it is somehow a good thing to prevent the extinction of animal species, (which, by the way, is the "natural order of things,") so why not try to bring some back? I am not talking about trying to have roaming herds of mammoths again -- which could devastate current ecosystems -- but why not in zoos or nature reservations?
I recently read the following two articles:
Japanese clone mouse from frozen cell, aim for mammoths
Woolly mammoth task: Extinct critter's DNA mapped
To summarize, the first article shows for the first time that it is possible to clone a dead animal whose body had been preserved in ice (for 16 years, not quite 100,000 -- true). The second article, scientists have reported that most (80%) of the genome of the woolly mammoth has been sequenced. (The trick was to extract from mammoth hair -- hairballs, actually -- which is less likely to have been contaminated or decomposed by bacteria.)
Together, these studies really do open the door to the bringing back of an extinct animal.
The problem with the idea of the Jurassic Park books and movies was that we do not have cells from animals related to dinosaurs. In the books and film, I believe they used frog cells as the next best thing.
For those of you less scientifically inclined, cloning requires more than just the full DNA of an animal; it requires a living cell from the same -- or almost the same -- species of animal. This is because there are other things in a cell besides nuclear DNA that are required for cell life, growth, and division. In short, you are not just a result of nuclear DNA from your mother and father. You also gain mitochondrial DNA solely from your mother as well as the initial proteins found in her egg cells required to translate and transcribe your DNA as your embryo grew.
Now frog and dinosaur egg cells are not likely to be that similar, so Jurassic park is not likely to happen -- until we have the technology and knowledge to synthetically recreate dinosaur egg cells from scratch. However, woolly mammoths are very closely related to modern day elephants, such that some scientists want to skip cloning altogether and just cross-breed mammoth sperm -- assuming they could extract it -- with elephant eggs and make elephant-mammoth hybrids. But it is probably going to be easier to clone -- to take an elephant egg cell, suck out its nuclear DNA, and pump in mammoth DNA -- than to cross-breed.
Even easier might be to just genetically engineer a modern elephant into a mammoth by making multiple DNA mutations to turn back on the "woolly" genes. Having the genomes of both animals would allow for this relatively easily.
I am so excited by this, because I've always been bummed out that woolly mammoths were extinct before I was born. How can you not like a fuzzy elephant?
And it doesn't have to be just mammoths. We could bring back the dodo or help out the Tasmanian devil.
Why do this?
Why not?
No, it isn't necessarily (directly) valuable to do in the sense of benefiting mankind, but it is certainly fun. Science is allowed to be fun sometimes. And the techniques developed in doing this could be very helpful or lead to more beneficial discoveries.
To argue that it is foolish to mess with the natural order of things is a weak argument, as everyone does that every single day. (If you want to live naturally, strip off your clothes and abandon your houses and go eat roots.)
Most people think it is somehow a good thing to prevent the extinction of animal species, (which, by the way, is the "natural order of things,") so why not try to bring some back? I am not talking about trying to have roaming herds of mammoths again -- which could devastate current ecosystems -- but why not in zoos or nature reservations?