First We`ll Clone A Mammoth, Your Gran`s Next

Scientists agree that extinct species will be available for cloning in the near future, including mammoths. What`s next?

Every new mammoth skeleton or of any other ancient and extinct species spurred scientists to think about cloning extinct species, National Geographic writes. Ever since Japanese scientists reported that they succeeded in cloning mice that have been frozen for 16 years, last November and Miller and Shuster of Pennsylvania State University announced 70 percent of the mammoth genome, there has been talk of cloning animals preserved in permafrost.

- I laughed when Steven Spielberg said that cloning extinct animals was inevitable.  But I`m not laughing anymore, at least about mammoths. This is going to happen. It`s just a matter of working out the details  - said Hendrik Poinar of McMaster University, an authority in the area of extinct species DNA, who worked as an advisor for a film about the making of Jurassic Park.

The matter is rather simple

Still, the details cannot be ignored. The remaining 30 percent of the DNA sequence need to be decoded, errors caused by sample degeneration need to be removed, DNA needs to be packaged into chromosomes etc. However, Shuster claims that this is not impossible with today`s technology.

- It`s a simple question of time and money, not of technology anymore -  Schuster said.

The first step is to organise mammoth DNA into chromosomes, but it is not yet known how many chromosomes mammoths had in the first place. Then, this information needs to be transformed into mammoths. One of two ways is to modify the chromosomes of elephants, mammoth`s next of kin. The other strategy would be to synthetically create the entire genome from scratch, however this was only done on a genome that is a thousand times smaller than a mammoth’s, National Geographic explains.

 Why mammoths, why not a big panda?

Once scientists have the chromosomes, they will be able to package them into membranes and get an artificial cell nucleus. Then, as the example of Dolly the sheep proved in 1996, they would switch the nucleus of elephant ova with a mammoth`s and stimulate the cellular division and transfer the ova into an elephant`s uterus. When you put it like that, it sounds impossible, however, these are far-fetched theories that require a lot of practice.

Some scientists are interested in more current problems like cloning endangered species. So far, they managed to clone two bantengs, an endangered Southeast Asian ox, by inserting banteng DNA into domestic cow eggs and placing the resulting embryos in cow foster-mothers. Such cloning model is planning to be implemented with large pandas,  African bongo antelopes and Sumatran tigers.

Ethical problems remain

Technically speaking, there are no more arguments against cloning, however, the ethical ones remain. To which extent is it useful to clone extinct species when their natural habitat no longer exists?

- Mammoths, like elephants, were intel­ligent, highly social animals.  Cloning would give you a single animal, which would live all alone in a park, a zoo, or a lab - not in its native habitat, which no longer exists. You`re basically creating a curio - said Adrian Lister, palaeontologist and mammoth expert at the Natural History Museum in London.

Tom Gilbert, an expert in ancient DNA at Copenhagen University cannot see the good or wisdom in cloning extinct species.

- If you can do a mammoth, you can do anything else that`s dead, including your grandmother. But in a world in global warming and with limited resources for research, do you really want to bring back your dead  grandmother? - Gilbert warns about the flip side of the issue.