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Mammoths, cloning and you
Shanadeus
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Registered User regular
From the Tech Herald:
According to Professor Akira Iritani of Kyoto University, a cloning technique pioneered in 2008 by Dr. Teruhiko Wakayama of the Riken Centre for Developmental Biology should enable him to bring the wholly mammoth back from extinction within the next five years.
The process in question was used by Dr. Wakayama to successfully clone a mouse from another mouse frozen for a period of 16 years—thereby overcoming the scientific hurdle associated with prolonged tissue damage when exposed to extremely cold temperatures.
With the effects of cold damage apparently no longer an issue, Dr. Iritani told UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph that all he needs “is a good sample of soft tissue” from a frozen mammoth in order to clone the mighty pachyderm.
Once a sample has been recovered and Dr. Wakayama’s technique has been applied in order to isolate healthy nuclei, an African elephant will be used as a surrogate host for the wholly mammoth during a gestation period of around 600 days.
Based on ongoing cold-beating experiments focusing on cattle, Dr. Iritani believes his chances of successfully cloning a wholly mammoth presently stand at around 30 percent.
He has also said a scientific research team will begin scouring Siberia in the summer for a viable tissue sample. If that search proves fruitless, he will contact Russian scientists in the hope of extracting nuclei from one of their already recovered samples.
I guess this raises the question of whether or not we'll be able to resurrect other relatively recently extinct animals such as the Dodo and the sabre toothed tiger.
Previously, scientists have tried to clone the Pyrenian Ibex with what I suppose you could call successful results:
Wikipedia wrote:In 2003, scientists attempted to clone the extinct Pyrenean Ibex (C. p. pyrenaica). This initial attempt failed; of the 285 embryos reconstructed, 54 were transferred to 12 mountain goats and mountain goat-domestic goat hybrids, but only two survived the initial two months of gestation before they too died.[53] In 2009, a second attempt was made to clone the Pyrenean Ibex; one clone was born alive, but died seven minutes later, due to physical defects in the lungs.[54]
But what should we do with all these animals if we manage to resurrect them?
The ones who died out directly because of human activity might survive in the wild so long as we don't repeat whatever it was that drove them to extinction in the first place but other animals such as the above mentioned Mammoth might have died out because of natural climate change and thus not be capable of surviving unaided without some form of human assistance.
Shanadeus on
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As to "what do we do?" I can't imagine much is going to happen except that they'll be repeat-cloned and given to various zoos. If enough extinct animals are perhaps a new type of zoo will emerge.
I think we all know how this ends.
I imagine they'd be pretty much just kept in zoos, though I could see people wanting the pygmy ones as pets.
So.... awesomely?
If it's good enough for my campaign slogan, it has to be true.
Life Finds a Way
Also a subclass of Neanderthals.
I wonder if when that'll happen.
my desire to feast upon the flesh of new creatures.
I'm pretty sure the reason for cloning those animals is because, as a scientist, it's fucking awesome, and as a non-scientist, it's still awesome so you get grant money.
I mean, fuck yeah it'd be great if it could happen, but the guy thinks he has a 30% chance of finding the right material alone, to say nothing of the rather poor results achieved so far with most clones.
......no?
Edit: Clones are, however, destined to die before the thing they are cloned from.
Stupid Telomeres.
No, they can live for quite some time, but do tend to have problems. Dolly the cloned sheep lived from 1996 to 2003, for example. Also we have better technology now.
Dolly the Sheep lived for about 7 years.
I don't think we can safely say that a good reason to do this is to learn the past behaviors of now-extinct animals, since we can never truly determine how large nurture plays a part in their development and actions. As a way of seeing real, breathing creatures that don't exist today, it'd be neat. As long as Wayne Knight doesn't get employed by the inevitable theme park resulting.
Best-case scenario: we're able to grow some actual living tissue, and see how it differs in structure and function from comparable tissue from modern evolutionary relatives. This gives us insight not just on the evolution of life on the planet, but on different ways evolution might 'solve' an adaptive problem.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Ever eaten a Banana?
[tiny]clones![/tiny]
But I like the idea of a Japanese scientist writing "because it's fucking awesome" in the "why are you doing this research" part of a form.
For sure. I bet mammoths were delicious.
yeah I knew that.
Saddest day.
The in order to produce dolly they made dozens of still-born and severely deformed mistakes before a viable sheep made it.
They will probably try it 10-20 times with the expectation of maybe 1-2 mammoths surviving and growing up.
Well I don't know but I bet it's a lot
I think the real question that needs answering is the opposite one.
A-one, a two-hooooo, a-three... *CRUNCH*
...Three.
Yeah that (and the Dolly thing) is pretty bad. I'm not really sure it is or should be ethical.
But I'd be all for injecting the DNA in some stem cells or something like that.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Clever girl....
Other than cloning things for the sake of cloning them, or observing how to evolution has changed modern animals, one thing I know scientists and doctors want to do is clone organs for organ transplant.
At the very least this will help push cloning technology that much further along.
Until they decide to clone dinosaurs, I think we'll be fine.
Also, I think the food supply thing. That could be interesting.
Release one or two t-rexes into tribal war stricken places, like africa, and then let whatever happens happens.
no more tribal warfare, no more hunger problems (at least for a little bit)
Or hell, mexico.
Or the dakotas.
Democrats Abroad! || Vote From Abroad
This is the largest thing. Imagine organ transplants that don't need anti-rejection pills, steroids, and a gamut of antibiotics/antivirals. Of course I'm sure drug companies will be sad, but fuck those guys.
If they're smart, they'll branch out into the equipment & chemicals needed to perform organ cloning. Medical devices & surgery supplies are a huge business, they just face different business challenges so pharma companies have to be careful reaching into that space.
(Can you tell I used to work for a pharma strategic consulting company?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Stock D&D edit
Also yeah I think cloned organs are probably only a few decades away at this point. I don't see any problem with advancing cloning technology through projects like these if it led to breakthroughs in human cloning. Also, fuck Bush Jr.
Why clone yourself? Clone some good looking, genetically awesome person and have your consciousness put in that new body.