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

[Guest Lesmore]

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...

Do you think man has been cloned already, or do you think there are plans afoot (no pun intended ) to clone man ?

[Guest Lesmore]

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

If a particular life form (ie; Passenger Pigeon)is extinct....do we need to recreate it ?

Why ?

I'm not sure why science needs to expend so much energy into a dead end, ie; recreating a long dead life form, unless the experiments have some merit and practicality for the living, or the future of the living, particularly man.

[Incorrigible1]

It will be done because it can be done.

Me, I want to see a Smilodon.

[Guest ajciani]

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

Only if you can find a frozen one. Perhaps the Minnesota Ice Man will do?

I suspect this is mostly BS. Even though the mammoth they are using was frozen solid for something like 6,000 years, the DNA would have still degraded during that time. They will need to do a lot of sequencing to cross-compare the DNA to make sure they get the correct sequence, and then they will have to construct the correct sequence through DNA polymerization (which is rather error prone). After getting a strand of the nuclear DNA with the correct sequence, they will need to figure out how to ball it up and stick it in a nucleus, which is not a trivial task, because we still don't know how Nature does it (one of the people in my department used to study that very topic).

So cloning a frozen 6,000 year old mammoth is more fiction than science. Cloning something from 100,000 year old bone fragments is pretty much impossible.

[Guest wudewasa]

Lesmore, I agree with you. The money that is used to manage endangered species recovery programs is limited. Therefore, working with populations of species that stand to recover up to a breeding population with a viable gene pool is of paramount importance.

Unfortunately every species is not a candidate to be saved in my opinion. Red Wolves and Florida panthers (a subspecies) simply do not have genetic diversity to recover. Both of these species have no habitat left to thrive in either. Millions of dollars have been spent to bolster and aid the recovery of these animals, but there isn't much to show at this time. Red wolf reintroduction failed miserably in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and Florida panthers have been given a genetic reprieve with introduction of panthers from west Texas. However, panther road mortality continues to be a problem, as well as genetic defects of holes in the heart and weak immune systems.

The best management practice that can be done is to take money allocated for endangered species and to BUY LAND and create habitat corridors for animals that need large home ranges. Ecosystem management cannot be done for one species but for the betterment of all species that comprise an area. This is the hard lesson that we have learned and hopefully mistakes can be reversed before biodiversity is compromised.

[Guest ChrisBFRPKY]

The thing to consider is if we have some valid Bigfoot DNA, verified in the Ketchum report, why not just grow us a Bigfoot in a lab somewhere? It could happen, but who's the first scientist that will try? It'd save alot of trouble trying to catch one if we can just clone one in the lab. Taa Daa ! Mystery solved? Chris B.

[Guest gershake]

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...

What is the difference to protecting species that would otherwise die out?

[Guest]

The state of genetic engineering, as a new and emerging science, is in a state of transformation. In the first examples of genetic work the researcher and lab depended on manipulating living tissues in frogs, mice, sheep and an increasing range of complex oranisms. When frozen mammoths were first brought up as a consideration the degredation of the mammoth DNA was a problem...and still is and alternatives such as using a living species that is closely related became possible when science started to do the hard work of decoding. Decoding no longer depends necessarily on eggs and sperm or other soft tissues but on reading the genetic code that, while broken, is still in its original relative position due to its being enveloped in the structural protien chiton and similar organic material in tissues like horn, bone, enamel and hair. Once the code is read and in order, the code of a living relative can be modified (DNA switches turned on and off) to match the sample from the extinct creature.

Animals still need to be bathed in the amniotic fluids of its mother's chemistry, and then raised within an environment that will trigger the kinds of behaviors that make complex animals like mammoths distinct from other elephants.

I hope these researches have lots of good luck and manage to create a population of mammoths that can be re-introduced into habitats that in many ways have suffered a loss of productive capacity when they lost the tremendous advantage of the mammoth's impacts on these now dormant ecosystem. Keystone species like elephants and other large ungulates do more than compete for resources but, counter-intuitively, they actually make it possible for the ecosystem for which they are adapted to support niches that a multitude of smaller animals and plants can utilize.

North America, after it lost its inventory of most large mammals 12.9 KYA, saw a decrease in complexity and productivity, and yet the ecosystem still has a memory ready to accept the return of these species. Look how successful the horse was once it was re-introduced. The only failure was the fact that it didn't also get introduced with suitable predators like lions who are well adapted to take down horses like they do zebra and wild *****.

A return of surrogate species to the American Southwest in particular would be an experiment in restoration that would lead to surprising advantages and challenges, and result in a return of some other species now on the brink, such as osage orange trees whose fruit are no longer being dispersed by animals since none are large enough to eat them and so spread their seeds. So even if science doesn't successfully clone mammoths, I think we would benefit if something approaching the original inventory of megafauna was re-introduced in ways that are hard to imagine but sure to enlighten us and make our ecosystem more dynamic, productive and resilient: camels, giant tortoises, elephants, rhinos, cheetahs, zebras, wisent, giraffes...

Edited January 19, 2011 by dogu4

[Guest squatchrider]

Does no one else just find cloning creepy? I am not talking morally wrong or against God. I just mean disturbing to my psyche. I think of all the drug recalls that have happened and think of advances in science which totally negate scientific beliefs from years before. What are we going to know about cloning 20 or 30 years down the road?

On the topic of what woman would carry a neaderthal. You know there are women out there who would gladly step forward and be willing to be the surrogate for this experiment. Look at what stupid things people do on reality TV right now for 15 minutes of fame. There would be those who thought this was their chance at fame and fortune. Of that I have no doubt.

[Guest]

It appears from observing some of the people that I know, that the cloning of a neanderthal has already been accoplished.

I do not have a problem with the cloning of a Wooly Mammoth or any other extent animal. I am uncomfortable with cloning a Neanderthat for fear that we would consider a Neanderthal to be sub-human. Homo Sapians do not have a good record with those we consider sub-human.

[norseman]

It will be done because it can be done.

Me, I want to see a Smilodon.

I want Arctodus Simus:

Edited January 19, 2011 by norseman

[Guest]

Does no one else just find cloning creepy? I am not talking morally wrong or against God. I just mean disturbing to my psyche. I think of all the drug recalls that have happened and think of advances in science which totally negate scientific beliefs from years before. What are we going to know about cloning 20 or 30 years down the road?

On the topic of what woman would carry a neaderthal. You know there are women out there who would gladly step forward and be willing to be the surrogate for this experiment. Look at what stupid things people do on reality TV right now for 15 minutes of fame. There would be those who thought this was their chance at fame and fortune. Of that I have no doubt.

Well, identical twins and triplets are nature's clones, so the thought of cloning doesn't really bother me. It would be how it was used unethically in different situations that would be the problem. For instance, a clone used for organ transplant or to replace a child lost in an accident, those are the kinds of things that give me the willies.

[Guest]

I don't want anything recreated in any great numbers that can sit on my car and crush it or nap on my roof and cause the house to collapse.

[Guest vilnoori]

A decade or so back people said it would take 50 years to decode the human genome. Someone invented a shortcut and walla, now not only is the nuclear genome of Homo sapiens decoded but so is Neanderthal's, and the Denisova woman's. Three separate species! Granted there are probably missing bits with the older species, but if you simply substitute modern human bits into the gaps you could make it work.

One of the main problems of custom designing a clone such as a Mammoth's is that the surrogate mother's womb rejects the cross-specific placenta of the baby. What scientists need to do maybe is discover a way to make an artificial womb. When that happens a lot of things are going to be cloned that you never thought possible. And somehow I don't think its going to take as long as we might think.

As soon as we figure out the exact nature of the problem, some creative individual comes up with a solution and tries it out.

Some claim that human cloning has already been done by a certain wacko Italian cult. How would we know for certain. As far as I know the technical problems of creating Dolly the Sheep are much outweighed by the problem of the telomere length, which determines the age of the clone. In other words the clone only lives as long as the individual has years left. So clone a 60 year old who is going to die at age 65, and even if you clone a brand new baby from one of his cells, that baby's telomeres are already going to limit his lifespan to only about 5 years. That would be so sad, wouldn't it. And yes the death rate of the attempts to get a baby clone in the first place is unconscionable particularly if you factor in the suffering of the surrogate or actual mother.

I haven't heard if the problem of the telomere length has been solved. But it's a big one.

[Guest vilnoori]

Some neat links on wiki:

Interspecific Pregnancy

http://en.wikipedia....cific_pregnancy

Artificial Uterus

http://en.wikipedia....tificial_uterus

Japanese creation of Artificial Uterus

http://www.mhhe.com/...2/g-bioe-17.htm

http://www.guardian....cience.research (a bit older but more in depth article)

http://www.nrlc.org/...icialwombs.html

How about the idea of creating a chimera that then has a womb that can sustain a cloned or extinct but renewed species? It is much easier to create a chimera that survives, than a pure clone. This is in a sense a recreation of the old way that the extinct Aurochs was recreated earlier in the century by interbreeding old strains of cattle as well as wild ones.

http://www.time.com/...1961918,00.html

As for genetic variability perhaps someday we will also engineer it.

Problems with Cloning:

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/tech/cloning/cloningrisks/

Edited January 20, 2011 by vilnoori