When Will There Be Herds of Mammoths?
(Credit: Image courtesy of Penn State and Dover Books)
With the announcement that the woolly mammoth genome has been sequenced, it seems natural to ask when we will finally see live mammoths. Since Jurassic Park, we’ve been tantalized by “promising” research that could some day soon lead to resurrecting long-extinct creatures. We even featured one of these researchers, Beth Shapiro, in last year’s young innovators issue (or, as it is know around the magazine office, the “I feel inadequate now” issue).
Well, I am here to throw some cold water on your plans for a mammoth-viewing safari vacation. We’re still a long way away.
There are a couple of ways you can start off when trying to recreate an extinct species. See, you need a copy of the creature’s DNA arranged in chromosomes and packaged in a nucleus. You can attempt to pull out an intact nucleus from some bone or hair or other remains that you find. This might seem like a good idea, especially since there was a study published a couple of weeks ago that did just this, pulling the nuclei out of mouse brain cells that had been frozen for 16 years. But 16 years in a freezer is far different from thousands of years in permafrost, freezing and occasionally thawing and refreezing. Finding mammoth nuclei with DNA that wasn’t damaged and contaminated would be difficult.
The other option is to work with a genome sequence and create chromosomes from that. The wooly mammoth genome, though, is only mostly sequenced (about 70%), and you need many copies of a complete sequence to make sure that there aren’t many mistakes left (sequencing isn’t foolproof). Then you have to organize the DNA into chromosomes, which hasn’t been done before, and create a nucleus out of them, which also hasn’t been done before. Oh, and you really need to do this multiple times.
But let’s say that you manage to find or create an intact nucleus with complete chromosomes and accurate DNA. Then you have to essentially clone the animal, transferring that nucleus to an egg—probably of an elephant—getting the injected egg to divide like a normally fertilized egg, and putting the egg into an elephant to carry it to term. This would be akin to cloning an elephant—but as you can probably guess by now, this also hasn’t been done before. (If you want a more detailed explanation of all the pitfalls on the path to creating a mammoth, Nature has a great article about this–and the whole mammoth study–though they are behind the pay wall.)
The bottom line is that if I’m lucky, I might see a mammoth before I die. But I probably won’t see a herd of them.
Digg
Reddit
Stumbleupon
We can’t even keep our current elephant herds, Asian and African, alive. So how can we keep herds of mammoths or mastodons alive? They evolved in conditions we can never duplicate. The money is better spent elsewhere, like finding a reasonable way to limit growth of the human population, which is the BIG problem today.
Comment by Ed — November 22, 2008 @ 5:46 am
The Grant Museum of Zoology at University College London is running an event: Ice Age Park: The Truth Aoout Cloning Mammoths on 11th December…
The potential for cloning a dinosaur may still be in the realms of science fiction, but what about reviving a more recently extinct animal? In the world of ancient DNA, woolly mammoths have recently become the most intensively studied member of the ice age megafauna – a group of large mammals which experienced global extinction around 12 000 years ago. In this talk, I will discuss the nature of this extinction, the contribution that modern molecular genetics has made, and the future potential for recovering the ice age animals.
Ian Barnes began his research career studying archaeology, having failed to understand that the Indiana Jones films were not documentaries. Realising this error, he again took career advice from a Steven Spielberg film and moved to working on ancient DNA. Over the last 15 years, he has been involved with many of the key ancient DNA studies of the ice age megafauna, including giant deer, sabre-tooth cats, short-faced bears and woolly mammoths. He is now a molecular palaeobiologist at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Following the talk, join us for a free glass of wine in a private view of the Museum. This event is free and there is no need to book.
Comment by Jack Ashby — November 24, 2008 @ 11:12 am
[...] years ago. And at our new sister blog, Surprising Science, some of the first posts are about woolly mammoths (a mere 10,000 years dead) and the bones of astronomer Nicolaus “the earth is not the center [...]
Pingback by Dinosaur Tracking — November 24, 2008 @ 1:52 pm
Mammoth-Elephant And Human-Chimp
A. From “Mammoth genome approaching completion”
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/38707/title/Mammoth_genome_approaching_completion
Genetic material extracted from the hair of woolly mammoths has revealed new information about the extinct creatures, including how closely related they are to modern elephants.
So far, the estimated overlap between the mammoth genome and that of the African elephant is about 99.4 percent…the two species last had a common ancestor about 7.6 million years ago… the rate of genetic change in elephants and their kin is about half that seen in humans and their kin during the same period…Humans and chimps last shared a common ancestor about 7 million years ago, and the genomes of these two species differ by about 1.24 percent…
B. See the brief “Seed of Human-Chimp Genomes Diversity” at
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-P81pQcU1dLBbHgtjQjxG_Q–?cq=1&p=179
A guaranteed eye-opener for this matter…
Dov Henis
(A DH Comment From The 22nd Century)
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-P81pQcU1dLBbHgtjQjxG_Q–?cq=1
Comment by Dov Henis — November 25, 2008 @ 12:17 pm
I would disagree with Ed; I think creating a mammoth, mastodon, or other extinct animal would do much to encourage humankind towards a greater appreciation of life.
Comment by Ken Erickson — November 25, 2008 @ 5:28 pm
I also would like to see some of these species “reborn” before I die. As far as curtailing the human explosion, we will need to curb the influence of major religions who prosthletize the expedience of constant childbearing.
Comment by chris kees — November 25, 2008 @ 5:32 pm
I believe that we should not try to bring back to life animals that have disappeared. We must think about natural selection, about evolution. It would be nice to be able to see a live mammoth, or a live dinosaur but these creatures became extinct out of natural causes. We should not try to resurrect these animals but try to do something to save the environment and let nature take it’s course.
Comment by Ioana Dumitru — November 29, 2008 @ 7:08 pm
If modern elephants are so genetically similar to mammoth dna, than are mammoths really a separate species or just another breed? Like chiwawas and st bernards they come from the same wolf ancestor. What about the “new species” of giant elephant in nepal?
Perhaps we don’t need to resurrect mammoths, we could just breed more from existing elephant species.
Comment by reptile — January 11, 2009 @ 5:44 pm
I watched a show not very long ago on Mammoths & they said that it would take around 50 years to bring back the Mammoths,if all went well,pretty neat I think,I also think that if there was a way to bring back Extinct Animals,why not,I would think a few were due to Man & the lack of care,I feel there is a reason for every animal in the Eco System…
Comment by Tasha — January 14, 2009 @ 11:55 pm