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Johnathan Blair / National Geographic
A museum worker inspects a replica of a woolly mammoth, a species that went extinct 3,000 to 10,000 years ago. In March 2012, scientists in Russia and South Korea announced a partnership to try to clone the mammoth and generate a living specimen.
If scientists can use genetic engineering to bring back the woolly mammoth, should they do it? How about the passenger pigeon? Or the western black rhino? Do we humans have a responsibility to restore at least some of the species that our ancestors wiped out? And if we bring them back, will they really be the same?
Such questions are the focus of TEDxDeExtinction, a public forum that's being presented on Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET at National Geographic's Washington headquarters. You can watch the whole thing online via LivestreamTEDx and National Geographic's De-Extinction website, which also has loads of articles and resources on the issue. The event has been organized by Revive & Restore, a nonprofit clearinghouse for worldwide de-extinction work that's under the aegis of the Long Now Foundation in San Francisco.
"De-extinction"? What's that?
"It's using new technologies like cloning and genome sequencing to reconstruct a species that went extinct," science writer Carl Zimmer explained. Zimmer's talk at Friday's TEDx event will help set the scene for the de-extinction debate, and he's also written a cover story on the topic for National Geographic's April issue.
National Geographic
National Geographic's cover story for the April issue focuses on the prospects of reviving ancient species.
De-extinction has been in the works for more than a decade, basically ever since Dolly the Sheep demonstrated in 1996 that mammals could be cloned from cells in a lab dish. Spanish and French scientists worked for years on an effort to bring the Pyrenean ibex back from extinction, by cloning cells that had been preserved from the last known animal of the species. They succeeded only in producing a deformed kid that died 10 minutes after birth.
That brief de-extinction (and re-extinction) took place in 2003 and was reported in 2009. Since then, significant advances have been made in cloning and in other technologies for DNA sequencing and gene splicing. That's allowed scientists to think about what previously was unthinkable. Russian and Korean researchers, for example, are looking through the tissue of a woolly mammoth that was preserved in the deep freeze of Siberia's permafrost, in hopes of finding cells that are suitable for cloning.
Harvard geneticist George Church, meanwhile, is working on a technique for inserting snippets of reconstructed DNA code from an extinct species into stem cells for a closely related living species. The coding for the traits of a passenger pigeon could be reintroduced, bit by bit, into a breed of common rock pigeon. Over the course of many generations, the rock pigeons would become more and more like passenger pigeons.
"George Church's method will open up a whole new range of possibilities," Zimmer said. "You're not actually grabbing an intact molecule that was inside an animal that was alive 1,000 years ago."
This type of reverse engineering could also open up a whole new range of questions. "Is a regular rock pigeon that's been given the traits that passenger pigeons had really a passenger pigeon, or is it a hybrid, or whatever?" Zimmer asked.
In a similar vein, plant researchers are sorting through the genome of Asian chestnut trees, with the intention of picking out the specific strings of DNA coding that can make American chestnuts more resistant to a species-killing fungus. The trick could save American chestnut trees from extinction, even though it's debatable whether they'd still be American chestnuts. "It's not the original thing, it's better," Zimmer said. "But should be we be doing that?"
It's not such a giant leap to think about looking through the Neanderthal genome as well, to find out whether it contains the coding for traits that could make humans "better." Church's reflections on that subject sparked all sorts of exaggerated reports a couple of months ago, replete with references to Neanderthal babies being spawned by human surrogate mothers-for-hire.
Zimmer said the last thing that Church and his colleagues want is a genetic free-for-all over de-extinction. "They want this to be something where there's a strong consensus," he said. "This is not an off-the-reservation project."
Friday's event could represent a significant step toward building that consensus. Watch the webcast and see for yourself. National Geographic's webcast portal includes the day's schedule.
Photographer Joel Sartore, one of the scheduled speakers at TEDxDeExtinction, has been documenting species on the brink of extinction for his Photo Ark project. Here are three of the species he has included in his portfolio. For more about Sartore, check out this Daily Nightly blog posting:
Joel Sartore / National Geographic
The golden pheasant (Chrysolophus pictus) is a species native to mountainous forests of western China.
Joel Sartore / National Geographic
The striking panther chameleon (Furcifer pardalis) is native to tropical forests of Madagascar. The reptile is highly prized by collectors for its bold colors and relatively large body size (up to 9 inches or 23 centimeters long).
Joel Sartore / National Geographic
The Mexican gray wolf (Canis lupus baileyi) is the most rare subspecies of gray wolf in North America. It is listed as critically endangered by the IUCN.
More about the genetic frontier:
- How synthetic biology will change us
- Potentially endless line of mice cloned
- Extinct tiger gene resurrected in a mouse
The de-extinction issue is due to be addressed in a one-hour National Geographic Channel special, "Mammoth: Back From the Dead," premiering April 12. Also, the Wildlife Conservation Society is planning a conference April 9-11 in Cambridge, England, on the implications of synthetic biology for conservation.
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.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. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. 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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De-extinction is an interesting term and should be used *very* specifically. The species must be returned to life as a thriving community in its natural environment. That and *only* that constitutes return from extinction. A few specimens in a zoo or game preserve most emphatically do not.
That is not always going to be a possible outcome. In the case of the Thylacine, for instance there is some possibility of restoring the reconstructed creature to the wild, but what about the mammoth? What was the natural environment of this huge heard animal is being wiped out by climate change. Where would a population of them live? Put them on the arctic tundra and they will simply die out again a century from now. That seems like a huge waste of effort and to resurrect them merely as novelties in zoos just seems like a pretty ignominious fate for for these magnificent creatures.
Let's use our heads *before* we make the stupid mistake just once.
Speaking of the mammoth, does the planet really need another huge mammal, one that consumes hundreds of pounds of vegetation daily, and produces a large amount of methane gas? Just its existence is a threat to local flora and fauna. And, the only benefit is the large ivory tusks. Poachers will be happy. But, after the novelty of bringing back a species, wears off, who's going to be responsible for the creatures? Who's going to make sure they're fed and healthy? Who's going to pay for all this? US Taxpayers?
The mammoth species lived through many huge climate swings in the last 5 million years, just like polar bears and other arctic animals. Species have migrated to their most comfy climate ever since they grew legs. No one is predicting (much less really believes) that ice and snow will leave Canada, Russia, and other arctic terrain any century soon. I think thriving herds of mammoth intermingling with caribou, wolves, and other large mammals in the far north would be a magnificent sight to see. I also think those vast swaths of planet up there can handle them just fine.
I beg to differ. Far from "no one" but actually quite a number of very credible people are predicting *exactly* that. I'm sure you would find doing actual research on this subject quite enlightening as opposed to just making stuff up.
Even if the above were not true, I just don't think that "magnificent to see" is really the right reason to go frankensteining nature. I'm just saying.
Well, how long have botanists been cross-breeding plants to create new ones, or to transfer desirable traits from one species to the next. If you're OK with that, then IMHO your just splitting hairs with the difference between that and de-extinction.
No arguments there. I'm all for de-extinction. Some of the animals lost to history would benefit the environment if they were brought back. When a species vanishes, the environment has to find a new balance. If we want to restore the environment to it's former glory, we need to also restore animals that existed in it. De-extinction of certain animals is almost necessary to restore the natural ecosystem of the world. Additionally, even reviving animals we would have no intention to let loose in the wild is a good thing. At the very least, they are kept in zoos and large contained preserves. The could provide educational value to people, and potentially have genetic traits that could be useful to their wild living relatives. Genetic diversity is a desirable thing.
Creating *new* hybrids is *quite* a different thing from bringing back an extinct species. To compare the two only muddies the waters. First of all hybrids are not species and in most cases are not created from different species, but from members of the same species that come from distinct populations with differing traits. Second, they are not something that was here before, had its time and passed from the world, they are something more or less brand new.
Scientist have created new species in the lab and observed new species develop in the wild. Domestication of various plants and animals has also created new species. And hybridization can result in new species (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_speciation). Why would bringing back a previous species raise any risk or issues these other examples haven't? Just because a species died out previously, doesn't mean that the cause for their extinction is still present or there aren't other factors today that can help them overcome those extinction pressures.
If a species died out because it evolved into something new, then there is no point in reviving it unless for educational reasons. If a species went extinct because we caused it to do so by altering the environment or hunting it to death, then I can see a reason to bring it back for more than just the education of the public. Bringing back an extinct species could be just what is needed in a given environment to restore it to the way it was before we altered it.
So how are these hybrids not species? I mean, even if I'm to accept your arbitrary assertion, how do the semantics make a substantial difference between an old species revived and a new species created from interbreeding to present ones?
That's not logic, that's fatalism. To say something "had it's time" is to imply that their existence was part of some grand plan or "meant to be". And if you want to believe that, whatever, but that's not a good reason not to revive a species. The primary concern should be the species' ability to survive, thrive, and contribute to a given environment (or a certain human industry), not whether or not they "had their time".
As a whole I think it's good that science is actually asking the question, Should we? Not just, Can we? Considering the rate of extinction of species due to a degraded environment, the question may be more relevant in the coming years. I'd be more interested in seeing if we can resurrect common sense in future generations.
With 7 billion+ humans on the planet this is a ridiculous question, there is not the room for the wildlife of today let alone mammoth, N.American lion etc. What effect would flocks of passenger pigeons so big they block the sun have on food crop production when they feed on a field? Try to perfect the technique with one or two specimens for study? Sure. Try to actually revive the species in the wild? Insane. The only way something like that would be feasible is if the world population were to be reduced to a billion or so maximum, for that to happen I think those individuals would have other things to worry about. I seriously doubt the human species has enough sense to take on a population reduction world wide so nature will do it in a most horrific way .....
Perhaps we should not be too hasty. maybe scientists need to learn how it's done, so that some day, on some distant world, a ship with genetic information from Earth can begin to populate a new Earth. Not only producing viable populations for animals that exist, but perhaps modifying some species so that they are better adapted to their new home. This is very important knowledge for the future of life itself. It is knowledge we humans should master.
Well Dennis I like your thinking but there is one little problem. If current trends continue to creep in the welfare state direction there will never BE a human on another viable world, that takes money and as proven by the end of the U.S. program "all that money could be spent on welfare programs instead of wasted". There just will never again be money to explore and discover and advance when it is flushed down the black hole of the nanny-state.
It would be nice if overspending governments were the only, or even the primary, impediment to human survival or scientific progress, but that's simply not true. If you insist on staining everything with politics, could you at least stick to relevant politics (like in this case, environmentalism or religiosity)?
Gee Dennis, I thought you right siders wanted the Government to STOP funding everything and privatise it?
Besides, with the trade deficit we have all our funds will end up in tow places, the hands of those who own the largest companies, and the Chinese. (which is sometimes both). America is headed down a path to oblivion. The only reason we have so many fewer people working today is because all those millions of jobs got shipped overseas and are not coming back. How else do you explain record territory for the Dow yet no new surge in jobs? Again! because let us not forget, we did this in 2000 too!
Does this seem like an exceptionally bad idea to anyone else? Maybe I've seen Jurassic Park once too many times.
In this case I think we should follow the Prime Directive. But no, people want real mammoths in their zoos.
Not a bad idea at all. You have watched Jurassic Park too much. :) Bringing back a T-rex would not be a good idea, but bringing back to life an animal we wiped out due to hunting, urban development would be a good thing. It is all about what you bring back to life, not should we do it at all.
Exactly! We should look at maybe bringing back Moderate Republicans while we are at it. They were a magnificent species.
Yeah, because all that urban development that did in the mammoth was a shame.
Clever girl...
Oh, please. Jurassic Park would have been AWESOME if they didn't decide to bring back raptors.
I mean, what were they thinking? You can't even see them in that pen!
Just think how cool the sidelines of football games would be. Real live mascots of previous extinct animals. For example Clemson could become the sabre tooth tigers.
I think the "golden rule" of science should be : Just because we can do somthing doesn't nessessarily mean we should.
First off, that's not a rule. It doesn't forbid, clarify, or specifically allow anything.
Second off, if it WAS a rule, it would be a terrible one. Science should always advance forward in all directions. If there's a misstep, then we learn from our mistakes, pick up the pieces, and move on. Timidity will only stifle progress.
One more small point. An animal is not merely the sum of its genes. We have learned over time that animals have culture. Wolves are taught to hunt by their parents. Birds learn their songs from other members of their species. Wildebeest have to learn the hierarchy of their herds and that knowledge comes down over time. Much of this stuff is not just instinct as many people presume, but culture. Who is going to teach a mammoth how to behave?
Eoanthropus,
Exactly, pretty scarry thought, mammoths running amok with no culture! We already have that problem with many humans, no need to add to the mix with something as big as mammoths.
Obviously, that depends on where it's being introduced. If it's going into the wild, then it will either learn or die, and if it dies, well, experiment failed, onto the next one. If it's living among humans, then humans will train it.
The fact that its culture is long dead is hardly an impediment; culture can be created as well as passed on.
I would like to see them bring back the Dodo, an extinct flightless bird that was wiped out in the 1600s.
But, the Dodo brings to mind another thought - consideration - as it pertains to de-extinction.
I understand that this bird ate seeds of a certain plant that enhanced, or even enabled, their germination as they passed through the bird's system.
Soon after the Dodo died out, so did the plant. There was no other species of bird that was able to pick up this mutualistic "responsibility" to enable it to survive.
Such is the delicate balance of nature that many humans know little of.
Even though the Dodo had a more varied diet, and could live on other things, what about those species that were so dependent upon another to support their continuance?
If a Koala-type animal were extinct, would we have the Eucalyptus ready for them to thrive on? The same thing with a giraffe, for example. Would there be any Acacia, their main food source, in order for them to continue in their new environment?
I would like to see the Moa brought back, but what did it depend upon to eat? (What would they use as the surrogate for this one, by the way, an Emu or Ostrich?)
Of course, my favorite is the Mammoth! I would love to see a Primigenius Bloomenbach standing before me in full coat and giant, curling tusks. I dreamed about this from childhood. But, would it survive the various harmful bacteria that it would be introduced to, here and now?
One other question that I am sure is considered:
Is it SUPPOSED to be extinct?
Accepting the controversy over those unfortunate man-induced erasures that could have been saved, there is a natural process of selection, environmentally, and with the inter-relations of species within the ecosystem that dictate survival.
What may be the consequences of disturbing this?
Your views?
I agree. We may have been responsible for the extinction of certain species, but Nature as adjusted and in many cases, bring them back could create more environmental harm than good.
For instance, bringing back the woolly mammoth just adds more competition for the animals that now occupy its former domain.
I think it's pretty safe to say that any species for whom its place in the ecosystem no longer exists is supposed to be extinct. I could use the example of the Polar Bear although it isn't actually a species. because it will produce fertile offspring with the Kodiak Bear. Anyway, the Polar Bear is semi marine adapted. It makes a lot of its living hunting seals out on the ice, but the bad news is that ice is diminishing pretty quickly and we human beings are largely responsible for that. Be that as it may, when that icecap is gone, there is a likelyhood that the Polar Bear will not be far behind. No habitat for the bear, the bear is *supposed* to be extinct then, right? Restoring the bear would be a stupid idea given that his habitat is destroyed, right? Maybe we attempt to restore the habitat, then restore the bear? By then we have beach resorts all around the polar sea. There is going to be some resistance to the idea of freezing them all over to make a home for bears.
The polar bear is a species. The Kodiak is a species. They come from the family Ursidae and therefore can interbreed. In fact the polar bear is considered a marine mammal by some biologiests because it has webbed feet for all the swimming they do.
It's not that the Polar bear and the Kodiak bear can have offspring, but that their offspring can have offspring as opposed to the horse and the donkey which can have offspring, but their offspring cannot.
I think imagining worst-case scenarios (like giant herds of animals ravaging our agriculture) years down the road at this point are taken too seriously.
"Do we humans have a responsibility to restore at least some of the species that our ancestors wiped out?"
Alan, so does this mean we know the actual answer to how the Mammoths, Dinosaurs etc, became extinct? Because last time I checked, 3000-10000 years ago, our ancestors were not really killing animals for fun, like we do now and nobody could point a finger to "WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?"
You say "Do we humans have a responsibility to restore", how about "Do we have a responsibility to preserve", so that in the future we don't again go and spend Millions and Billions of dollars to recreate/restore what "We killed as GAME or just because it looks good in our living rooms". Like another comment said "I am glad these scientists are at-least asking the question of Should we do this".
In my opinion, it is a bad idea. Where will these animals reside, in their natural habitat or in our living rooms? If not in our homes, than where do we get this natural habitat from? Every day more and more forests are being destroyed to prepare more "Real Estate" for us and our future generations, and we are thinking of bringing back things from the past? "Survival of the Fittest" has become the norm and I think it is just a bad idea go against it by turning back time, just because "WE THINK WE CAN!"
"Do we humans have a responsibility to restore at least some of the species that our ancestors wiped out?" Alan, so does this mean we know the actual answer to how the Mammoths, Dinosaurs etc, became extinct?
aggp11 In this context dinosaurs are irrelevant. We do know for sure that at least our HUMAN ancestors did not wipe them out.
I don't care as long as the Government isn't funding it. I don't want my tax dollars being spent on bringing back some ancient salamander, mammoth or pigeon that has no realistic place in this modern world.
And what if that animal has a distinct and useful environmental function? What if it can be used to wipe out a pest causing environmental destruction or harming humans? And how will we know if government agencies decided right off that bat that their funds can't be used for this sort of "controversial" research?
Open your mind a little, Gil!
This is sort of a gray area. While it would be fascinating to actually see a woolly mammoth alive, standing right in front of you we must ask ourselves why we would do this and what the purpose should be. As several people pointed out, just exactly what would you do with these resurrected species? I would think that you would have to clone both a male and a female and see if they could breed. But what would you do with them? Keeping them in a zoo doesn't seem right, but our world has changed considerably since the first woolly mammoths walked the earth. And if they are hybrids, are they really the original animal or not. I would say not. While science is at times so fascinating and exciting that it seems more like the stories in those sci fi pulp fiction magazines that were so popular decades ago, just because scientists can do something...can accomplish something...doesn't always mean that they should. The de-extinction of animals should be taken one slow step at a time, with proper procedures and plans for these animals in place first.
I want mammoth burgers!
I want Mammoth-Fur coats!
Mammoth fur coats? In Dallas?
Fashion!
I want those ribs Fred Flintstone orders, yummmm.....
Yabba, dabba, doo
Why do we think we SHOULD bring a species back from extinction? Natural selection has a way of weeding out populations that can't adapt and thrive in the current environment. Messing with the natural order through artificial means is much worse in my mind than acting the role of an invasive species, which is exactly what the homo sapien and his ancestors are. The Earth is pretty resilient. We ought to stop picking the flora and fauna that should live and die and let nature sort it out. It's pretty good at doing so. If CO2 levels rise and algae takes over, then only those creatures that can thrive in that environment prevail until the levels come down and other species develop over time. The problem is not human beings affecting the environment. The problem is human beings trying to choose which species are "correct" and which are "incorrect". There's more damage in that than there will ever be from "climate change".
Why is that particularly dangerous?
I mean, putting aside that pretty much all of human agriculture revolves around doing all the things that apparently terrify you (and have been amazingly successful in doing so), there's nothing particularly benign about nature's methods of engineering or malicious about humanity's.
Clone, clone, clone, clone, clone,....
More! MORE!! Bwa ha ha ha haaaaa!
It would be a good way to find out how woolly they really were.
If it wasn't meant to be done, or at least the science behind it used, then Nature wouldn't have provided for it being possible. Additionally, humans wouldn't have evolved brains capable of making it possible. Would the species that result from this be the same? No, but species are constantly evolving. Technically, every generation is different as it adapts to a changing environment. Will they have the same behavior as their ancestors? Also no, but also not relevant because behaviors evolve as much as the species itself. Short of transporting one from the past, nothing that could ever be done would result in an "authentic" de-extincted species.
DeExtinction is a good idea but can only work for species introduced to the same environments in which they were lost. Do they know enough about the mammoths environment at the height of their populations. Also, the fact that the global climates are threatened along with some 7 billion people. The mammoth may be a good zoo project.
How about a game preserve project?
It's a dangerous game.