Nov 04
Cloning Woolly Mammoths?
I recently read this article about how scientists were able to clone mice that had been frozen for 16 years. Apparently, cloning is difficult using frozen tissue, unless it has been injected with chemicals to prevent the cells from bursting.
Wakayama’s team dug out some mice that had been kept frozen for years and whose cells were indisputably damaged. Freezing causes cells to burst and can damage the DNA inside. Chemicals called cryoprotectants can prevent this but they must be used before the cells are frozen.
They tried using cells from several places and discovered that the brains worked best. This is a bit of a mystery, as no one has yet cloned any living mouse from a brain cell.
However, now that they have successfully cloned some frozen mice, the scientists have set their sights on possibly cloning woolly mammoths.
Mammoths may be the extinct animals that scientists would be most likely to try to clone, as many of the animals have been found preserved in ice.
In July 2007 Russian scientists discovered the body of a baby mammoth frozen in the Arctic Yamalo-Nenetsk region for as long as 40,000 years.
“It remains to be shown whether nuclei can be collected from whole bodies frozen without cryoprotectants and whether they will be viable for use in generating offspring following nuclear transfer,” Wakayama’s team wrote.
OK, so obviously it is not yet known if this is even possible. But it sounds like they’re going to try.
I’m not sure i think that is a good idea! Cloning is already a very touchy topic, so i won’t go into that. But even if you agree with cloning, natural selection chose to eliminate the woolly mammoth. Who are we to play God and bring back an extinct species? And where do you draw the line? I can easily see a Jurassic Park scenario taking place if, for example, they could figure out how to clone dinosaurs. It would be a huge moneymaking opportunity. Are the woolly mammoths any different? What would be the purpose in cloning them - would they be put in a zoo and exist only for people to gawk at?
I’m all in favor of science and experiments, but for some reason, this just seems wrong to me.