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Subscribe to RSSHendrik Poinar, a scientist who believes he is close to cracking the woolly mammoth's genetic code, says that cloning extinct species is now possible. NBC's Jim Maceda reports.
Russian and South Korean scientists, including the cloning expert who was the focus of a stem-cell scandal six years ago, have signed a deal to try re-creating a woolly mammoth using cells recovered from 10,000-year-old frozen remains.
The papers for the joint research project were signed on Tuesday by Hwang Woo-Suk, chief technology officer for South Korea's Sooam Biotech Research Foundation; and Vasily Vasiliev, vice director of Russia's North-Eastern Federal University, during a ceremony at Hwang's office in Seoul.
Hwang is infamous for his role in human embryonic stem-cell research: In 2004 and 2005, he and his colleagues claimed to have extracted stem cells from what they characterized as the world's first cloned human embryos. But in late 2005, his work was found to have been based on fabricated data, and he was barred from continuing research with human cells.
Despite the disgrace, Hwang continued working with animal cloning techniques. Before the scandal broke, his team announced that they produced the world's first cloned dog, nicknamed Snuppy, and that claim has stood up to scrutiny. Last October, Hwang's team at Sooam unveiled eight cloned coyotes that had been produced by injecting nuclei from coyote skin cells into dog eggs. At the time, he said he was interested in cloning an endangered African dog species known as the lycaon ... and was interested in cloning a mammoth, too.
In December, Japanese news media said that scientists recovered a seemingly viable sample of bone marrow from a frozen mammoth thigh bone in Russia's Sakha Republic, and that a mammoth could be cloned back from extinction within five years. This week, Agence France-Presse reported that North-Eastern Federal University is working with the Japanese scientists and with the Koreans. The Beijing Genomics Institute is said to be taking part in the Korean-Russian project as well.
Reports from Seoul suggest that the mammoth-cloning effort could be launched this year if the Russians can ship the remains to Sooam's laboratory. "The first and hardest mission is to restore mammoth cells," a colleague of Hwang's at Sooam, Hwang In-Sung, told AFP.
Jung Yeon-Je / AFP - Getty Images
South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-Suk, (far left) and Vasily Vasiliev, vice director of North-Eastern Federal University of Russia's Sakha Republic (far right), exchange agreements during a signing ceremony on joint research at Hwang's office in Seoul on Tuesday.
Sooam Biotech Research / AFP - Getty Images
This diagram released by the Sooam Biotech Research Foundation shows the process of replacing the nuclei of elephant egg cells with those taken from the mammoth's somatic cells to bring a mammoth back to life.
The plan calls for extracting nuclei from the thawed-out mammoth cells, putting them into elephant egg cells and stimulating the cells to start dividing. Embryos would be implanted into elephant wombs for gestation — and if the effort is successful, a mother elephant would give birth to a baby mammoth around 22 months later.
That's a big "if," as I wrote in December when I discussed the Japanese-Russian project. In addition to the usual problems surrounding interspecies cloning, it's highly doubtful that genetic material recovered from tissue that's been frozen for millennia would be sufficiently intact for extraction and implantation. What do you think of Hwang's chances? Feel free to register your vote at right, and voice your opinion in the comment section below.
More about mammoths:
- Clone a mammoth? Not so fast
- Mammoths mated with a different elephant species
- Mammoth resurrection on the way?
- Woolly mammoth's DNA mapped
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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As if most newsvine readers have any of the technical expertise to make any sensible response.
Bob Parsons from GoDaddy would probably pay $250,000,000 to get to be first hunter in thousands of years to shoot a mammoth, thereby funding the whole project.
Why Not give it a try, the worst will be a dead baby animal.
If it does live will it be the only ONE. It will think it is a freak ??
A monster-osity ! oh no a movie ?
I wish this team every success. The possibility of being able to bring back species that have long vanished from Earth is an exciting prospect, which if successful, offers hope for the preservation of endangered species of our own time.
Cloning a wooly mammoth WOULD be an interesting challenge. BUT...who KNOWS what kind of disease or pathogen might be cloned right along with the animal!! What IF they were sucessful?? What kind of biologic malady MIGHT be unknowingly un-leashed into the worlds population; a biological bacteria or virus that we know absolutely nothing about and are not equipped to respond to in such a situation. Worse yet, how about a HYBRID bacteria or virus, being brought back to life after 11,000 years?? Clone if you will...but be ready to suffer the consequences if something horrible is released into the environment from that cloned animal. Nature had its reasons for the extinction of the wooly mammoth; perhaps we should leave things alone.
I suspect the opposite would be more likely. That since the wooly mammoth lived in a time without so many of the evolved and mutated bacteria, viruses, etc... that it would probably be more likely to die of diseases. We as humans have had time to develop immunities to most of these.
Lets do it just because we can?? Where do we draw the line? Who draws the line and who enforces that line? I want absolute power so why not get a cool virus to bring the world to its knees to serve me? Or I think all humanity is a pollutant and should be expunged from the earth so nature's balance is restored. Look at Florida's everglades as example of our ability to introduce critters that change the natural ecology. Heard of "killer bees" migrating into southern USA with no natural restrants.
YEAH! Lets MAKE something we have no clue about. The science here does not require a living breathing critter to further science's goals. AND of course whatever it is, will never escape. Right. (see above).
I look forward to seeing mammoths in my local zoo!
Mammoth steaks...it's whats for dinner....
HELLO didn`t anybody watch jurassic park.......they always make the movie first ...
Bah, mammoths are only extinct because humans ATE THEM TO DEATH. If we did it once, we can do it again! LET THEM try to break free and take their revenge, we'll be waiting! With barbeque sauce and stone spears!
Put a rush on that project ....
Now that I'd love to see ....
I'd also like to see them bring back some of our lost larger birds as well ....
This type of project should have been done already from the DNA of lonesome George ....
Thanks Alan , for this article ....
America should start the cloning today. In 20 years we would have Jurassic Park.
Ron Paul 2012! Basically admiting that I am clueless here
What disgrace? If they can figure out how to make one in pigmy size, I'd sure buy one.
What is the premise of this project? Just to verify that it can be done? I'm sure that in time (if not now) they will be successful at doing this with extinct animals. Will it be for us humans to put them in zoos or some other kind of artificial habitat so we can then pay money to "gawk" at them? Of what benefit is this to the animals created? The habitat to support them no longer exists on our planet earth, hence, they are extinct. We haven't figured out how to keep our own environment intact, which as a result, is making more animals practically extinct. Why not use this money focus on trying to preserve those environments that are NOW driving some species to near extinction, instead of "bringing back" extinct species which are gone from the face of the earth for a good reason, no habitat for them? The human analogy is for a human that has been dead for hundreds of years, perhaps cryonically frozen, to be "reawakened" later, when all the people he ever knew are gone, when everything around him is foreign. How comfortable and enjoyable would that be?