Not far away, shaggy Yakutian horses grazed on tall grass. It was August And Hysolli was a long way from Boston, Mass.
She and George Church, the director of her lab, had traveled to northeastern Russia. If Hysolli let her mind wander, she could imagine a much larger animal lumbering into view — one larger than a horse, larger than a moose. This elephant-sized creature had shaggy reddish-brown fur and long, curving tusks. It was a woolly mammoth. During the last ice age , a period known as the Pleistocene PLYS-toh-seen , woolly mammoths and many other large plant-eating animals roamed this land.
Now, of course, mammoths are extinct. But they might not stay extinct. It aims to use genetic engineering to create an animal very similar to the extinct woolly mammoth. Others have called them mammophants or neo-elephants. Whatever the name, bringing back some version of a woolly mammoth sounds like its coming straight out of Jurassic Park. The nature preserve Hysolli and Church visited even has a fitting name: Pleistocene Park. If they succeed in creating elemoths, the animals could live here.
Genetic engineering technology may make it possible to resurrect the traits and behaviors of an extinct animal — as long as it has a living relative. Experts call this de-extinction. Ben Novak has been thinking about de-extinction since he was 14 and in eighth grade. His project explored the idea of whether it would be possible to recreate the dodo bird.
This flightless bird was related to the pigeon. It went extinct in the late s, about a century after Dutch sailors arrived on the only island where the bird lived. Can we put it back? They are working to bring back passenger pigeons and heath hens. And they support efforts to use genetic engineering or cloning to rescue endangered species, including a type of wild horse, horseshoe crabs , coral and black-footed ferrets.
Sorry, T. But what genetic engineering can achieve for conservation is astonishing and eye-opening. Many scientists, though, question whether bringing back extinct species is something that should be done at all. Thankfully, we have time to decide whether this is right. The science of bringing back something like a mammoth is still in its very early stages.
Most of the mighty beasts died out around 10, years ago, likely due to a warming climate and human hunting. A small population survived until about 4, years ago on an island off the coast of Siberia. In Siberia, though, cold temperatures froze and preserved many mammoth bodies. Cells inside these remains are completely dead. But they can read any DNA in those cells. This is called DNA sequencing. A museum worker checks the hair on this woolly mammoth replica.
The idea of resurrecting a woolly mammoth sounds like something out of a Michael Crichton novel. Is it really happening? And how much of a revolution in science will this be? The moving force behind the American effort to create a woolly mammoth is a giant, bearded geneticist named George Church. Give us a character sketch—and describe the project he is leading.
The other pole of this initiative is the Siberian steppe. I was surprised that there are enough woolly mammoths in the permafrost in Siberia to support a trade in ivory. Tell us about that and the indigenous Yakut people. What about the ethical—and biological—issues? One of the shocks at the end of the book is when a Korean-Russian team actually find a frozen mammoth with blood still in its veins.
Is that really true—and how is their plan different from the American one? But who knows? This interview was edited for length and clarity. Share Tweet Email. Why it's so hard to treat pain in infants. This wild African cat has adapted to life in a big city. Animals Wild Cities This wild African cat has adapted to life in a big city Caracals have learned to hunt around the urban edges of Cape Town, though the predator faces many threats, such as getting hit by cars.
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Animals Climate change is shrinking many Amazonian birds. For instance, we inherit more than just DNA sequences from our parents. We inherit epigenetic changes, wherein the environment around us can affect how those genes are regulated. Also important are the behaviours animals learn from observing other members of their species. The first mammophants will have no such counterparts to learn from. And even if de-extinction programs are successful, they will likely cost more than saving existing species from extinction.
The programs might be a poor use of resources, especially if they attract funding that could have otherwise gone to more promising projects. The opportunity costs of de-extinction should be carefully scrutinised. The costs will eventually come down. In the meantime, some highly expensive projects might be worth considering. The second concern is more subtle. Some environmentalists argue once de-extinction becomes possible, the need to protect species from extinction will seem less urgent.
Would we still worry about preventing extinctions if we can just reverse them at a later date? The research team has analyzed the genomes of 23 living elephant species and extinct mammoths, Church said. The scientists believe they will need to simultaneously program "upward of 50 changes" to the genetic code of the Asian elephant to give it the traits necessary to survive and thrive in the Arctic. These traits, Church said, include a centimeter layer of insulating fat, five different kinds of shaggy hair including some that is up to a meter long, and smaller ears that will help the hybrid tolerate the cold.
The team also plans to try to engineer the animal to not have any tusks so they won't be a target for ivory poachers. Once a cell with these and other traits has successfully been programmed, Church plans to use an artificial womb to make the step from embryo to baby -- something that takes 22 months for living elephants.
However, this technology is far from nailed down, and Church said they hadn't ruled out using live elephants as surrogates. We've got a lot of experience with that, I think, making the artificial wombs is not guaranteed. It's one of the few things that is not pure engineering, there's maybe a tiny bit of science in there as well, which always increases uncertainty and delivery time," he said.
First of all, you're not going to get a mammoth. It's a hairy elephant with some fat deposits.
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