We live in an age of scientific wonders. Not long ago I read
about some scientists that were going to try cloning the Mammoth. The mammoth
is a prehistoric elephant with enormous tusks. The genetic code or genome of
the mammoth was published in the journal, Nature, in 2008. Scientists extracted
DNA from fossil mammoth bones and were able to obtain genetic sequences
particular for that animal. The genome is a blueprint for an organism; the
chromosomes can contain a million base pair sequences. The fragments which were
extracted from the mammoth bones were about 200 base pairs long. That may not
seem like much where a million is concerned but considering the age and the
sample they had to work with, it seems like an amazing feat to me.
The way they planned the cloning was that they were going to
obtain an egg cell from an elephant and replace the elephant embryo with
mammoth DNA embryo. Now granted, some of this should probably be taken with
grain of salt, because the South Korean scientist (Hwang) saying this was found
out to be lying about cloning a human from stem cells not too long ago. The
same scientists though have actually already cloned the cat, dog, pig, cow and a wolf. Do you think they
could really clone the Mammoth? Should we even think of cloning a mammoth?
Where would it live? Could it live? Interesting to think about.
To learn a bit more about cloning check out this genetics
page from the University
of Utah:
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