North-Eastern Federal University announced the discovery of a wooly mammoth carcass on the Siberian island of Maliy Lyakhovsky this week.
This discovery is unlike any other however, because this mammoth was extremely well-preserved. According to CBC News, the Russian researchers who uncovered the animal found preserved blood frozen in pockets of ice under the mammoth’s belly. A McMaster University geneticist, Hendrik Poinar told CBC news that he doubts there are intact cells within the carcass—which would make cloning easier—but that “it’s not outside the realm of possibility.”
Sir Ian Wilmut, one of the scientists who managed to clone the world’s first mammal (Dolly) using the adult mammary glands of a sheep, told The Conversation, that while the Dolly method would not work for the mammoth, there are other feasible options in helping this animal make a ‘comeback’.
He outlined a method in which to get the greatest number of donor eggs from elephants—the mammoth’s closest living relative—by transplanting ovarian tissue of a female elephant into a mouse. After there are enough eggs to account for the low success rate of cloning, Wilmut suggests obtaining DNA from mammoth bone marrow by extracting the bones when they are at their lowest temperature and then quickly warming the cells so that any DNA will not degrade as the bones thaw. In this way, Wilmut stated that “while unlikely at present, the development of some form of mammoth creature or hybrid might be possible in the longer term.”
It sounds like something straight out of Jurassic Park—but it is simply modern science.
Photo courtesy of David Meloni, Wikimedia Commons