West Coast Connection Forum
Lifestyle => Train of Thought => Topic started by: Woodrow on July 15, 2003, 04:35:50 PM
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Un-frickin-believable...
Not sure how I feel about this yet...
Scientists attempt to clone woolly mammoth
By Charles Arthur, Technology Editor
16 July 2003
Scientists hoping to clone prehistoric woolly mammoths are preparing their first frozen DNA samples in a bid to revive the species.
The specimens of bone marrow, muscle and skin were unearthed last August in the Siberian tundra where they had been preserved in ice for thousands of years.
Researchers at the Gifu Science and Technology Centre and Kinki University want to use the genetic material in the cells to clone a woolly mammoth, according to Akira Irytani, a scientist at Kinki University in western Japan.
First they must determine whether the five specimens airlifted from Russia are really from mammoths. If so, they must decide whether the DNA locked inside is well enough preserved to self-replicate. After that, it could take several years to actually produce an animal. "There are many different problems to overcome," the Gifu Centre's Hideyoshi Ichibashi said. "I think we can move ahead only one step at a time."
The idea of cloning mammoths from specimens discovered in permafrost holds a perennial fascination for scientists since cloning of adult mammals was shown to be feasible with Dolly the sheep in 1996. But in 1999 Alexei Tikhonov, chairman of the Mammoth Committee of the Russian Academy of Science, who took part in an expedition that uncovered one of the animals buried in the permafrost, said he and his colleagues on the scientific committee were not preparing to clone the mammal. "You have to have a living cell for cloning, and not a single cell can survive in the permafrost," he said then.
Dr Irytani said the idea was to develop the cloning technology on extinct animals to aid in the preservation of endangered species. So far, six mammoths have been discovered and partially or completely unearthed from the permafrost, which is as hard as concrete and has to be broken up with jackhammers.
Kinki University scientists, with veterinary experts from Kagoshima University in southern Japan, have searched for mammoth DNA samples since 1997 in Siberia. The techniques used include ground-penetrating radar, which can detect the size and shape of buried objects.
So far, no cells bearing cloning-quality DNA have been found. The initial plan called for finding mammoth sperm cells, which could be used to inseminate a modern day elephant and create a mammoth-elephant hybrid. But no sperm cells have been found, and other samples retrieved during previous excavations, including legs buried under permafrost, have turned out to be left unusable by time and climate changes.
Dr Irytani was more hopeful about their samples, estimated at 20,000 years old, saying they had been well preserved in the ground at about -20C (-4F).
Mammoths died out about 13,000 years ago because humans hunted them to extinction. One plan to revive mammoths would not use cloning, but the more straightforward technique of artificial insemination of any intact sperm into African elephants, the mammoths' closest living relative.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=424757
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Great now Jome can have Elephants in his zoo ;D
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umm.. thats kinda fucked up... its it too hot for those type of creators...
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i think this is cool... its not like they're gonna breed with elephants in the wild and upset the balance.. they'd probably be kept in a special zoo somewhere ;D
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i am all for animals rights...
**kicks dogg away from feet**
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hehe... well this is resurrecting a species that died... or did mankind kill em all?
giving life to an extinct species is good... using it to create super animals for farming or whatever tho is another issue...
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you didnt get the joke did you
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kinda :)
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lol what animal right activist kicks there dog... lol
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It's old news.I also think the whole idea sounds rather fanciful,and they haven't found any sperm so it's all just hypothetical.
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They'll never be able to do it, wishful thinking. We don't even have the ability to 'clone' from DNA right now, all we do is put an egg and a sperm together. GEE, THAT TOOK SOME KNOWLEDGE.
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^ they said that about the moon...
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^^ Yeah, but I think there are religious and scientific reasons they won't be able to do it. I think god won't allow full on cloning, and also, I think the way it'll be 'explained' is it'll just be one of those things we never figure out. For instance; why does the body need sleep? Nothing rests, your muscles still move, brain still works, autonomic systems still function, it's unnecessary... but it's NECESSARY. We just have no friekin' idea why. I believe it's one of god's secrets, for some reason, he's stepped in and made sleep necessary, even though it's unnecessary... get me? I think they same thing will occur with cloning. We won't be able to figure something about it out, and we'll never be able to quite get there.
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cooooooool..cant wait for the dinos now 8)
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cooooooool..cant wait for the dinos now 8)
10,000 year old mammoths are allready unlikely.............let alone dinosaurs living 65 million years ago at the latest.....
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^^ Yeah, but I think there are religious and scientific reasons they won't be able to do it. I think god won't allow full on cloning,
How do u know this? Surely he "allowed" Dolly to be cloned? If you are to be a consistent christian then you surely believe the bible as the inerrant word of God. In the bible I recall it saying something in Genesis about Man being giving dominion over all the animals in the world by God. Thus it would be alright for Man to perform experiments on animals and thus clone them. However cloning humans is another matter, as he was not given direct dominion over other humans.
and also, I think the way it'll be 'explained' is it'll just be one of those things we never figure out. For instance; why does the body need sleep? Nothing rests, your muscles still move, brain still works, autonomic systems still function, it's unnecessary... but it's NECESSARY. We just have no friekin' idea why. I believe it's one of god's secrets, for some reason, he's stepped in and made sleep necessary, even though it's unnecessary... get me? I think they same thing will occur with cloning. We won't be able to figure something about it out, and we'll never be able to quite get there.
Doesn't the body grow 'better' once u have a reasonable amount of sleeping hours? I think it's just simply resting to combat the effects of living in a fallen world. I doubt Adam and Eve truly slept until after they sinned. Adam slept though due to God so that he could create Eve. Maybe it's kinda special in that way.
I doubt that we'll clone any mammoths or dinosaurs though. I doubt there is alot of intact DNA to use for cloning left after such a long time.
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if this would work out, it would be a great step in science. like seer said: its not like they're gonna breed with elephants in the wild and upset the balance.. they'd probably be kept in a special zoo somewhere
also, archeolochists would get to know a lot more about the time era.
i support the idea 8)