Woolly Mammoth to be cloned

Within five years, a woolly mammoth will likely be cloned, according to scientists who have just recovered well-preserved bone marrow in a mammoth thigh bone.

Japan's Kyodo News first reported the find. Russian scientist Semyon Grigoriev, acting director of the Sakha Republic's mammoth museum, and colleagues are now analyzing the marrow, which they extracted from the mammoth's femur, found in Siberian permafrost soil. Grigoriev and his team, along with colleagues from Japan's Kinki University, have announced that they will launch a joint research project next year aimed at re-creating the enormous mammal, which went extinct around 10,000 years ago.

 Mammoths used to be a common sight on the landscape of North America and Eurasia. Many of our distant ancestors probably had regular face-to-face encounters with the elephant-like giants.

The key to cloning the woolly mammoth is to replace the nuclei of egg cells from an elephant with those extracted from the mammoth's bone marrow cells. Doing this, according to the researchers, can result in embryos with mammoth DNA. What's been missing is woolly mammoth nuclei with undamaged genes. Scientists have been on a Holy Grail-type search for such pristine nuclei since the late 1990s. Now it sounds like the missing genes may have been found.

In an odd twist, global warming may be responsible for the breakthrough. Warmer temperatures tied to global warming have thawed ground in eastern Russia that is almost always permanently frozen. As a result, researchers have found a fair number of well-preserved frozen mammoths there, including the one that yielded the bone marrow.

Russian geneticists suggest breeding mammoths to fight crisis

Russian geneticists are working to resurrect the mammoth, the enormous cold-tolerant mammoth is an ideal animal for agricultural breeding, they say. "Our studies dedicated to decoding the mammoth's genome will soon allow us to resurrect this long extinct animal," Alexei Tikhonov, secretary for the National Mammoth Committee told Life.ru MosNews reports.

"There are twoways to restore a species: the first one is cloning, but it requires a fully intact cell from the animal. When there is no cell left intact, but an animal can be recreated by decoding its genom," Tikhonov explained. According to researchers, by combining the genome of the mammoth and the Indian elephant, they will be able to create a transgenic animal.


Today, a mixed team of Russian and American scientists have almost completed decoding the mammoth's genetic identity.

"We already have the DNA from the hair of the famous Yukagir mammoth, found in Yakutia," Tikhonov said.

"I wouldn't be surprised to see a living mammoth in the very near future, although a lot depends on the funding, of course," he said.

In times of financial crisis, mammoth farms could be a real blessing, scientists say, as they would produce cheap meat, skins and precious mammoth ivory.

One average-sized mammoth of four or five tons would provide enough meat for a hundred people for a whole year.

Researchers also think the mammoth meat should have an excellent taste, as prehistoric people took pains to hunt the dangerous animals instead of opting for easier prey.