# Russian and Japanese scientists are planning to clone a woolly mammoth



## Drone (Dec 8, 2011)

> The research team says it could bring Mammuthus primigenius back from extinction within the next five years using marrow cells from a recently discovered mammoth thigh bone and an elephant as a surrogate mother. Scientists from Russia's Siberian Mammoth Museum and Japan's Kinki University said this week that they are now analyzing what look to be very well-preserved marrow cells from a mammoth's femur which was discovered in Siberia this August.



Yeah first live mammoth in 10 000 years .....



> Just as Dolly the sheep and other animals have been cloned, the process will involve inserting DNA from the mammoth into the nuclei of naturally occurring egg cells from another animal. Unlike the cloning of existing animals, however, this will mean using the egg cells from an animal of an entirely different species—in this case, one of the three species of elephant, which are in the same taxonomic family as mammoths, known as Elephantidae.



So it won't be a "pure breed", rather hybrid.



> But the mammoth team faces long odds in their pursuit, according to scientists at the Roslin Institute where Dolly was cloned in 1996. *They said the chances of successfully cloning an extinct species was in the range of 1 - 5 %*, according to the BBC, and suggested *a cow* would actually be the "best biological fit" as a surrogate mother, though that would likely mean gestation to term would not be possible.



A mother cow for a mammoth? WTF



> If the team is successful, it wouldn't actually be the first time an extinct animal has been restored through cloning. In 2009, Spanish scientists managed to clone a bucardo, or Pyrenean ibex, using a domestic goat egg and an ibex-goat hybrid as a surrogate mother.
> But the bucardo clone died just minutes after its birth—and that was an animal that only went extinct in 2000.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16068581


My personal thoughts: I find it ridiculous and wrong. They sound like dice rollers


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## FordGT90Concept (Dec 8, 2011)

I guess they never heard the old adage "don't dig up the past."


They use cows for surragate mother's frequently--doesn't matter what sort of mammal is the result.


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## Black Panther (Dec 8, 2011)

FordGT90Concept said:


> They use cows for surragate mother's frequently--doesn't matter what sort of mammal is the result.



I think the problem would be that the baby mammoth would already be the size of a cow... at birth...

Poor cow


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## dorsetknob (Dec 8, 2011)

think your find that they mean a COW Elephant as the host/ surrogate mother not a bovine cow
A COW Elephant would be the nearest in size to a female mamoth and because of shared ancestory/dna the only logical choice
also the gestation period for elephants/mamoths would be simmiler ie Elephant's takes 645 days. bovine cow 279–292 days


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## Bjorn_Of_Iceland (Dec 8, 2011)

they were dead, and should stay dead. Nature chose to do so. Reviving them will only upset ecological balance


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Dec 8, 2011)

I find it incredibly likely that we played a significant role in their extinction. Why are we allowed to kill them off but not bring them back?


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## assaulter_99 (Dec 8, 2011)

Reminds me of the movie "The Mist". Some stuff are better left as they are. We should rather concentrate on saving animals that are already threatened by extinction (pandas, rhino's and the list goes on) instead of wasting resources on that. We already have enough sheep for wool, so I really don't see the point.


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## MRCL (Dec 8, 2011)

Interesting. Why not bring the Dodo bird back? That poor thing went extinct entirely because of the evil known as... MAN!

But what would be the goal of this? bringin an animal of this size back, for what? Prehistoric animals and modern environment don't mix well. If mammoths would'nt have gone extinct, they'd surely would have adapted to modern flora, their source of food.

Whatever the case, please Japan, don't try to clone Velociraptors.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Dec 8, 2011)

sweet ill be goin jurasic park for me 60th hopefully.
25 years so get onit ya lazy scientist gets


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## MilkyWay (Dec 8, 2011)

Who knows if they could adapt to the modern world? Its unnatural, this sort of thing would upset the ecological balance. Introducing other animals into new environments they can end up disturbing the balance. The grey squirrel was never native to the UK yet now its the dominant species of squirrel. Non-native species can kill off other native species.

Im a believer in dont play god or we will all end up as computer chips.

Clones die, its not very pleasant they end up having cancers and shit. Theres cloned meat in the system in some countries, its banned in the UK.

EDIT: None of this will probably be an issue in my lifetime but in the future who knows what shit will happen.


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## MilkyWay (Dec 8, 2011)

Anyone remember Dolly the sheep?


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## JATownes (Dec 8, 2011)

> "C'mon, it'll never happen. Not in my lifetime," said Webb Miller, a Penn State computer scientist and genomicist who helped decipher the genetic code of a woolly mammoth.





> "DNA from a woolly mammoth is a mess," he explained. "It's fractured into very short pieces, and there's a lot of postmortem DNA damage other than just breakage. The code gets damaged a lot."





> These cases suggest that there's not much of a chance of re-creating the mammoths. Genetic engineering may eventually produce a "hairy elephant" with mammoth-like characteristics. But a creature genetically identical to the behemoths of the Ice Age? "If somebody does that, I will eat my hat," Miller said. "And I'll wonder why they did it."



Source

I'm not holding my breath on this one.


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## NinkobEi (Dec 8, 2011)

Seems like they should use an Elephant. A cow may be much too small to birth such a large animal. And the Mammoth may require a long gestation period. Dumb scientists


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## NinkobEi (Dec 8, 2011)

MilkyWay said:


> Who knows if they could adapt to the modern world? Its unnatural, this sort of thing would upset the ecological balance. Introducing other animals into new environments they can end up disturbing the balance. The grey squirrel was never native to the UK yet now its the dominant species of squirrel. Non-native species can kill off other native species.
> 
> Im a believer in dont play god or we will all end up as computer chips.
> 
> ...



First off, it would never have to "adapt." It would be in a cage for its whole life and probably end up in a zoo.


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## digibucc (Dec 8, 2011)

Bjorn_Of_Iceland said:


> they were dead, and should stay dead. Nature chose to do so. Reviving them will only upset ecological balance



this idea that nature is natural and hasn't been influenced by humans for tens of thousands of years is ridiculous. think of the most wild place you can ... amazon maybe? it's ecologically dependent on human activity such as clearing, planting, and migration as well as thinning animal herds.

we have held some measure of control over nature since we first came on this earth, why should we stop now? it is in our genes to dominate - people, land, knowledge. believe me i recognize the negative aspects, but simply not trying to find the answer is not an option. you can only do it as safely as possible.



LAN_deRf_HA said:


> I find it incredibly likely that we played a significant role in their extinction. Why are we allowed to kill them off but not bring them back?


yep


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## Outback Bronze (Dec 8, 2011)

The aussie mammoth version.


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## lilhasselhoffer (Dec 8, 2011)

Why is, because we can.  

Are we not playing Jeopardy?  My bad.

Raising extinct animals is a nice idea on paper, but realistically not a feasible long term goal.  Raising animals that died, largely due to inability to cope with new environmental stimuli, is like spending money on inventing the perfect pair on pants.  You can spend the money, but the truth is there are more important projects out there.

It is my belief that this is a foray into genetics research, much more than the altruistic resurrection of a dead species.  While the positive PR of bring the woolly mammoth back to life is a motivation, the real motivation is moving the science one step closer to being acceptable to use on humans.  


All this aside, this is not playing god any more than humans already do.  Your house cat, dog, and other pets are all genetic offshoots of far more aggressive creatures than man bent to their will.  If you believe bringing back dead species is any different then you need to starve to death.  Carrots should be purple, wheat is so genetically culled that it isn't funny, and livestock has been selectively bread for as long as humans have had animals.  Not eating the results of "playing god" means you wouldn't be able to eat 99% of what is out there...


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## Drone (Dec 8, 2011)

digibucc said:


> we have held some measure of control over nature since we first came on this earth, why should we stop now? it is in our genes to dominate - people, land, knowledge. believe me i recognize the negative aspects, but simply not trying to find the answer is not an option. you can only do it as safely as possible.



Yes it's a dilemma. Knowledge/science/technology is a double-edged sword. It's either gonna save or destroy the world. Since the dawn of time humans first only tried to survive and when they succeed they tried to change the world. Is it just a pristine instinct, <program code> or human is just a puppet in someone's game, I dunno but that's how it is.


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## bostonbuddy (Dec 8, 2011)

mammoth is cloned, when anchient immune system comes into contact w/ modern viruses, new super virus that wipes out humanity results. It could happen.


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## erocker (Dec 8, 2011)

Sounds delicious!


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## Solaris17 (Dec 8, 2011)

I dont see a problem with this at all. Not to mention the scientific infomation that can be gathered if they succeed hybrid or not it would tell us alot about how fast they grew or if they were docile etc simply by comparing it to non extinct pure breeds that were used to.


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## NinkobEi (Dec 8, 2011)

erocker said:


> Sounds delicious!



someone was complaining about there being no new meats to try. good thinking russian and japanese scientists!


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## Kreij (Dec 8, 2011)

erocker said:


> Sounds delicious!



We already have great steaks.
Now if they would clone Pterodactyl's we could have some AWESOME hot wings!


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## theJesus (Dec 9, 2011)

There was a time when this sort of stuff would be considered necromancy.


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## twilyth (Dec 9, 2011)

MilkyWay said:


> Anyone remember Dolly the sheep?
> http://img.techpowerup.org/111208/Dolly_face_closeup.jpg


The problem with Dolly and all clones seems to be that they start with artificially short telomeres which makes them age and die prematurely.  Unless they've figured out how to rebuild the telomeres during gestation, this should continue to be an issue.  I don't really understand why though since telomerase is secreted during gestation.  IDK.


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## Fourstaff (Dec 9, 2011)

I am just going to leave this here


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## Kreij (Dec 9, 2011)

I always thought it would be cool to have a clone of myself so I could send it off to work while I stayed home and goofed off.
I bribed some researchers in Europe to make a clone of me.
Now we just fight about who has to go to work and who gets to goof off, and there is another mouth to feed.
The up-side is that now there is someone else who sucks at video games as bad as me.


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## DragonBorn (Dec 9, 2011)

What will this clone mammoth do will it fly like the one in skyrim lol


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## Kreij (Dec 9, 2011)

DB said:
			
		

> What will this clone mammoth do will it fly like the one in skyrim lol



No, but it will spawn a new television show called "The Mammoth Whisperer".
It's all about marketting.


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## DragonBorn (Dec 9, 2011)

Kreij said:


> No, but it will spawn a new television show called "The Mammoth Whisperer".
> It's all about marketting.



Or a show called (can Bethesda Game Studios patch the clone)


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## Drone (Mar 14, 2012)

Update. The deal is signed. 



> The deal was signed by Vasily Vasiliev, vice rector of North-Eastern Federal University of the Sakha Republic, and controversial cloning pioneer Hwang Woo-Suk of South Korea's Sooam Biotech Research Foundation.
> 
> Hwang was a national hero until some of his research into creating human stem cells was found in 2006 to have been faked. But his work in creating Snuppy, the world's first cloned dog, in 2005, has been verified by experts.
> 
> Stem cell scientists are now setting their sights on the extinct woolly mammoth, after global warming thawed Siberia's permafrost and uncovered remains of the animal.



Well it looks like a cloning spree



> By replacing the nuclei of egg cells from an elephant with those taken from the mammoth's somatic cells, embryos with mammoth DNA could be produced and planted into elephant wombs for delivery, he said.
> 
> Sooam will use an Indian elephant for its somatic cell nucleus transfer. The somatic cells are body cells, such as those of internal organs, skin, bones and blood.
> 
> ...




http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-skorean-russian-scientists-clone-mammoth.html


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