A well-preserved thigh bone of a woolly mammoth thawed out in Siberian permafrost. Scientists from the Sakha Republic mammoth museum in Russuia, working with scientists atthe Kinki University of Japan, plan research on cloning the DNA to produce a live mammoth over the next five years. Mammoths are similar to elehants but considerably bigger. Scientists speculate that they became extinct due to climate change, human hunting and possibly exposure to diseases.
The Daily Mail reports scientists expect to replace the nuclei of elephant egg cells with nuclei materials from the mammioth thigh marrow cells. This may produce mammoth embryo DNA that can be implanted in a female elephant for gestation. AFP notes that scientists expect this procedure to work because elephants and mammoths are closely related.
An earlier attempt in the 1990s to bring back mammoths failed, says Fox News, because scientists could not find mammoth bones that contained undamaged genetic material.
The technical skill in DNA retrieval has advanced since those days, as well. In 2008, Dr. Teruhikjo Wakayama closed a mouse that had been frozen for 16 years. And the cloning of cattle, as discussed by Iritani in the Huffington Post, has improved to 30 percent of attempts.
The attempt could take five years due to a period of up to two years to achieve successful impregnation, followed by a gestation period of 600 days.
Summarized from: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/315513
The Daily Mail reports scientists expect to replace the nuclei of elephant egg cells with nuclei materials from the mammioth thigh marrow cells. This may produce mammoth embryo DNA that can be implanted in a female elephant for gestation. AFP notes that scientists expect this procedure to work because elephants and mammoths are closely related.
An earlier attempt in the 1990s to bring back mammoths failed, says Fox News, because scientists could not find mammoth bones that contained undamaged genetic material.
The technical skill in DNA retrieval has advanced since those days, as well. In 2008, Dr. Teruhikjo Wakayama closed a mouse that had been frozen for 16 years. And the cloning of cattle, as discussed by Iritani in the Huffington Post, has improved to 30 percent of attempts.
The attempt could take five years due to a period of up to two years to achieve successful impregnation, followed by a gestation period of 600 days.
Summarized from: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/315513
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