- Woolly Mammoth — Illustration by Sam Mauck
The cousin of modern elephants, the woolly mammoth was a large creature that once inhabited the cold, northern parts of North America and Eurasia. The species died out nearly 10,000 years ago, relatively recently compared to most other prehistoric creatures we know of.
Most of the woolly mammoth remains that have been discovered are not fossilized, but instead frozen solid. While the remains are usually well preserved and left in an organic state, the extreme cold still does damage to their genetic material. Finding usable mammoth DNA for the cloning process is not going to be an easy task. “The Penn State scientists who sequenced its genome did so by studying a huge number of tiny fragments of mammoth DNA,” said Professor Turner.
The mammoth cloning team plans to get its DNA from an extremely well preserved specimen that was recently discovered in the Siberian permafrost. This ground is normally always frozen, but it is currently melting, partially due to global warming. The specimen, which was found in August, is in such good condition that the cloning team believes it will be able to salvage intact genetic material from its bone marrow. If the team can obtain undamaged mammoth DNA , there is a chance the scientists can successfully clone the mammoth.
Their plan is to implant the DNA in the nucleus of an egg cell taken from a modern-day female elephant. The egg will then be placed in the womb of a female elephant, which will serve as a surrogate mother for the mammoth. Assuming a gestation period similar to that of a regular elephant, the baby mammoth should be born about a year-and-a-half to two years later. Taking all things into account, the team believes that it could produce a living mammoth in as little as five years’ work.
Cloning is a slowly emerging science that has seen some success in the past, with the success of cloning mice and sheep leading to the feasibility of cloning a mammoth. However, a woolly mammoth is much more genetically complex than rodents or sheep, and the use of 10,000-year-old frozen genetic material in the cloning process doesn’t sound extremely promising. Even if we assume that the cloning process works out perfectly, there are still some issues. No one can really say just how well the gestation and birth will go, or whether the woolly mammoth would even be able to survive in present times.
This isn’t to say that scientists have no hope of ever bringing a woolly mammoth back into the world, but this cloning team doesn’t seem to have a promising plan, according to Turner. “A more realistic approach— and one which I think most scientists would agree is going to be possible— would be to genetically engineer living elephants with mammoth DNA,” said Professor Turner. “One research team has already spliced mammoth DNA into a bacterial genome and gotten the bacteria to produce mammoth hemoglobin!”
There is some potential in the way of genetic engineering, but this isn’t a potential that’s going to come to fruition any time in the next few years. The scientists on the mammoth cloning team seem to be rushing right into their plan and have really overestimated their chances of success. According to Professor Turner, “one of them, the Japanese scientist Akira Iratani, actually has a history of announcing projects like this that haven’t worked.”
Though the success may not come from this particular group of scientists, it’s likely that scientists will successfully bring us a mammoth at some point in the future. However, that isn’t likely to be anytime soon. •
- The mighty woolly mammoth, a creature who existed roughly 10,000 years ago and roamed the icy Eurasian landscape. Scientists are attempting to bring this fascinating creature back to life by using frozen genetic material. Illustration by Carolyn Dylag.
