The Cloning Of A Mammoth....can Neanderthal Be Far Behind ?

[Guest Lesmore]

Interesting article. I wonder what the future holds...will science eventually be able to clone Neanderthal, or Australopithecus or better yet Giganthopithecus ?

What if the Lab is located next to a dense, deep forest in the PNW ?

I only half joke.

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/17/scientists-trying-to-clone-resurrect-extinct-mammoth/?hpt=T2

Edited January 18, 2011 by Lesmore

[Guest Lesmore]

Interesting article. I wonder what the future holds...will science eventually be able to clone Neanderthal, or Australopithecus or better yet Giganthopithecus ?

What if the Lab is located next to a dense, deep forest in the PNW ?

I only half joke.

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/17/scientists-trying-to-clone-resurrect-extinct-mammoth/?hpt=T2

I've had to add the following...the short timing of the edit window has caught me once again.

I keep on thinking about that best seller...Jurassic Park . Sometimes life imitates art.

Is cloning ancient species that have died out millenniums ago...a good idea. I know that this question was posed in Crichton's book...but will the question be something that will be an issue in the future ?

[norseman]

Very cool stuff.

[Guest wudewasa]

Yes,organisms be cloned. However, there are still issues of implantation and carrying the clone to full term that need to be improved upon. Dolly, the sheep, illustrates this point:

"Even though cloning was once considered science fiction, it became a reality on February 27, 1997. On this date, English scientists announced that they had used the somatic cell nuclear transfer process described above to create a cloned sheep named Dolly. In this experiment it took 277 attempts at cell manipulation and 29 embryo implants before Dolly was born. This means that 276 sheep embryos, fetuses and newborns died to create a single sheep."http://www.stemcellresearchcures.com/cloning

Cloning a closely related species such as neanderthal would surely rile ethicists. Some states have already passed laws banning human cloning:

http://www.ncsl.org/default.aspx?tabid=14284

[southernyahoo]

LOL Could you imagine who or what would carry a gigantopithicus to full term!

[Guest]

I don't know about cloning. I do know that with banked eggs and sperm, it is best to use it fairly quickly and not let it sit for years in cryo. This mammoth has been frozen for many thousands of years. I think it will take a lot longer than 6 years to produce a cloned woolly mammoth zygote that won't have transcription errors. I think a better technology, one we don't have yet, is to genetically engineer a mammoth with stem cells from whatever elephant species is closest to it. You could use the mammoth genome as a pattern and build a gene with the right sequences of amino acids and just create what you wanted. Caterpillars do it all the time turning into butterflies, rearranging their amino acids while they are in soup form in the cocoon.

Edited January 18, 2011 by Jodie

[Guest Lesmore]

I don't know about cloning. I do know that with banked eggs and sperm, it is best to use it fairly quickly and not let it sit for years in cryo. This mammoth has been frozen for many thousands of years. I think it will take a lot longer than 6 years to produce a cloned woolly mammoth zygote that won't have transcription errors. I think a better technology, one we don't have yet, is to genetically engineer a mammoth with stem cells from whatever elephant species is closest to it. You could use the mammoth genome as a pattern and build a gene with the right sequences of amino acids and just create what you wanted. Caterpillars do it all the time turning into butterflies, rearranging their amino acids while they are in soup form in the cocoon.

Do you think we, or at least some of us, would 'be in the soup' if cloning or genetically engineering get's out of hand and something runs amok...because it's not quite tight...if you know what I mean .

Les

[Guest TooRisky]

To me this is very bad... Acting God like in recreating a species that was taken from this earth by nature alone seems to be moving in the wrong direction... And believe me this wont stop at the Mammoth because the real and ultimate challenge will be cloning man himself.... Do not kid yourselves...

[Guest]

Do you think we, or at least some of us, would 'be in the soup' if cloning or genetically engineering get's out of hand and something runs amok...because it's not quite tight...if you know what I mean .

Les

I agree with you, but someone, somewhere probably will in the future, or is in the process of doing it now. Usually any idea that I have has been dreamed up already. I can see both sides of the coin, good and bad coming from it. I can see someone doing this with Neanderthal DNA. But the implications for space exploration alone, well that would be just marvelous. We wouldn't be limited to a planet with an ecology just like earth or we could adapt faster to any changes here on earth.

[Guest]

1997 was awhile ago. I know of several parallel creations in the ag industry.. people cannot stop with this. And like Too Risky said, people figure into it. And who knows what else. Seems with some people there are no rules to break.. so that means expect anything.

[Guest wudewasa]

The moral obligation to create additional members of an imperiled population that has been compromised due to anthropogenic(human induced) activity through captive breeding programs is a cornerstone in conservation biology.

The California condor, black footed ferret, red wolf, and a number of sea turtle species have benefitted from such programs, much to the chagrin of some taxpayers.

Habitat loss, overhunting and predator control programs have all led to the demise of these said species. However, we are not sure if humans led to the demise of neanderthal and mammoths, or if other climatic variables played a larger part in their extinction. So the moral obligation to ressurect these extinct animals is unclear. Even if this were to be accomplished, what habitat would they be released in that would be comparable? The Kamchatka region in Russia has been proposed with the hypothetical reintroduction of mammoth, but what are we supposed to do with Neanderthals: repopulate the Neander Valley with them?! Also, while modern elephants may be able to be used as surrogates for mammoths, the issue of demanding that human females volunteer womb usage for neanderthal fetuses will not go over well with most people.

On a much more realistic note, cloning Thylacines, passenger pigeons and Carolina parakeets from recovered DNA has been discussed as a real means to bring these species back from humanity's past mistakes. The issue of genetic diversity will arise, as these are essentially copies of one animal, and now comprise an extremely limited gene pool, dangerously susceptible to disease. The black footed ferret is an example of such an problem.

"Little had been known about the elusive and rare black-footed ferret, and biologists began gathering data on its behavior, reproduction and survival rates. But one year after documenting an estimated 129 ferrets, the Meeteetse population experienced a rapid decline.

Canine distemper, a disease for which black-footed ferrets have no immunity, was diagnosed as the culprit. To salvage this last known population, all remaining ferrets in the Meeteetse population were captured and moved in 1987 to captive breeding facilities at the Wyoming Game and Fish Department's Sybille Research Facility." http://www.fws.gov/mountain-prairie/feature/ferrets.html

[Guest]

Oh yeah of little faith, trust me, there is some woman out there amongst the 3,460,000,000 that would step up to surrogate a Neanderthal baby if the price is right.

[Guest]

Cloning humans (and messing with genes to do cool stuff) would be all righty okay (even hunky dory as far as that goes) as long as you keep a pool of 'wild human' genes just in case you mess up too bad...sort of like a reset button you can push in times of need.

Sometimes I suspect that is us.

But that's just me. Carry on.

Edit to add cool stuff, cause I think there may be some really cool stuff coming....

Edited January 19, 2011 by Ilikebluepez

[Guest]

Good examples Wude... friend of mine worked with the Meeteetsie pop in the field.

[TKD]

Arnold Schwarzenegger was in a movie. It had to do with cloning of him self.

In it they had this thing were you could clone your pet... Repet I think.

Cloning will be the good, the bad and the uggly.