Posted on 12/19/2005 12:02:45 PM PST by SunkenCiv
A team led by Hendrik Poinar at McMaster University unlocked secrets of the creature's nuclear DNA by working with a well-preserved 27,000-year-old specimen from Siberia. Colleagues at Penn State sequenced 1 percent of the genome in a few hours and say they expect to finish the whole genome in about a year if funding is provided... "While we can now retrieve the entire genome of the woolly mammoth, that does not mean we can put together the genome into organized chromosomes in a nuclear membrane with all the functional apparatus needed for life," said Ross MacPhee, a researcher at the American Museum of Natural History who worked on the project. "We can't even do that with modern DNA."
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
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this one is about mtDNA:
Extinct mammoth DNA decoded
BBC News | Sunday, 18 December 2005 | Helen Briggs
Posted on 12/18/2005 9:21:33 PM PST by planetesimal
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1543145/posts
They need to figure out a way to make a gigantic cow. Imagine the prime ribs...
We can't do that with modern DNA."
Yeah, but you can envision them salivating over the idea. Hasn't anyone contemplated the issues involved? Or at least seen Jurassic Park.???
I'm sure you can get some gigantic ribs from a mammouth!
But I agree, the biggest prime rib around here goes for 24oz. That's just not nearly big enough.
And we need mammoths back because....
Because we can? The Bill Clinton branch of science has spoken.
Just another animal to place on the endangered species list...even though there aren't any.
Classic example of a headline that is contradicted by its article. We have absolutely no idea about how to go about "recreating" anything.
Being able to sequence or read DNA is vastly different from being to "write" it.
"They can finish the whole genome in about a year "if" funding is provided."Is that a hint?
Wow, this would be exciting.
If they want to clone a woolly mammoth, all they need to do is get a blood sample from Ed Asner.
They can clone the mammoth, but first they have to find an elephant egg to incubate it in.
It would be nice (and remarkable in the extreme) if functioning gametes (sperm cells in the case of this article) could be found. I'm wondering if it wouldn't be worthwhile to look also for female gametes (eggs) and do in vitro fertilization of a bunch, and implant 'em in a modern elephant mama as the host. And of course, do it more than once. But there's been such a project going (looking for sperm) for around ten years, and the idea has been around for at least 30 I think. So far, bupkis.
A hairy mammoth bull, right, cow and calf, part of a scene from "Prehistoric Kansas," at Dyche Museum in Kansas City, Mo., in this 1938 file photo. AP file image
a group of stories from 1999:African elephants may be facing a species splitThe genetic dissimilarity between the forest and the savanna elephants "is as great as between lions and tigers and jaguars and snow leopards and all the big cats," said Stephen J. O'Brien, head of a genetic research laboratory at the National Cancer Institute. The genetic difference between the forest and savanna African elephants is about 58 percent of the genetic difference between the African and Asian elephants, said O'Brien.
by Padma Tata and Nicola Jones
Aug 23 2001Cloning A MammothThree years ago, French explorer Bernard Buigues spotted what turned out to be a mammoth tusk poking up from the frozen soil along the Bolchaya Balakhnya River in Siberia... When its teeth were carbon dated they were found to be connected to a 47-year-old animal that had died 20,000 years before... If the mammoth meat--a term scientists would never use--is as fresh as hoped, it may be possible to extract enough undamaged genetic material to create a living relative of an animal that has been extinct for 10,000 years... DNA analysis performed on Baby Dima, a mammoth found in 1977, suggests that the Jarkov mammoth might be sufficiently close to the Asian elephant for recovered sperm to fertilize an elephant egg... If sperm is unavailable, the explorers would attempt to bring back cells with healthy DNA... Genetic engineers believe that the cloning side of the operation, while difficult, would not be impossible... Even if scientists fail to inseminate an elephant with mammoth sperm or clone a woolly mammoth from recovered DNA, the Jarkov carcass appears to be so well preserved that there is a considerable amount of knowledge to be gained from a careful examination. Its blood would help pin the tail on the mammoth's family tree... It was just this sort of analysis that told scientists that Baby Dima was more closely related to Asian than to African elephants.
by Jim Wilson
March 2000
Raising the MammothFrench explorer Bernard Buigues thinks so. Or, at least, he's certain it's worth a try. He and his team will soon begin digging out the carcass of a male woolly mammoth that's been frozen in the tundra for up to 23,000 years. If all goes well, they will lift the creature and a block of earth around it with a giant helicopter and fly the precious cargo almost 300 kilometers to a large ice cave in Khatanga, Siberia.
by Patrick J. Kiger
There, a group of scientists will slowly begin looking into the past, thawing small sections of the animal and permafrost to look for clues that might tell them more about the world in which mammoths lived. With luck, the scientists will be able to collect DNA from the animal, perhaps even its sperm. Only then will Buigues and his team know if the dream of cloning this beast from the past is still within their reach.Can They Clone A Mammoth?"It's a question of getting quality DNA," says Yves Coppens, a French paleontologist. Coppens says the temperatures in the ice cellar where scientists will gradually thaw the 20,000-year-old mammoth out for study are too warm to preserve the DNA needed for cloning. Team members say DNA can survive at temperatures of minus 22 degrees or lower, while the ice cellar temperature will kept at between minus 14 degrees and 4 degrees.
by Patrick J. KigerClues On A Dead MammothMammoths ceased to exist about 10,000 years ago and scientists still aren't sure why they did. Some claim they were hunted to extinction; others say they were done in by a dramatic climate change or a mysterious virus. So what evidence do the scientists in Siberia hope to find on a mammoth that's been dead about 23,000 years? Roll your mouse around the mammoth below to see what they'll be looking for on this rare piece of prehistoric evidence.
by Patrick J. KigerMammoth Vs. MastodonLet's clear a few things up: Elephants are not descendants of mammoths — they're cousins who scientists say evolved from a common ancestor. And mammoths are not to be confused with mastodons. Yes, they descended from the same animal — the pig-like Moeritherium — but they're distinctly different creatures.
by Patrick J. Kiger
Scientists Dig Up Near-Intact Woolly MammothThe mammoth, dubbed "Zharkov" after a local man who first discovered its tusk sticking out of the ice in 1997, was a nine-foot tall adult male that would have looked like a hairy elephant to the modern eye. Carbon dating of bits taken from the mammoth at the site show it is 23,000 years old. Other tests show it died at the prime of its life, aged about 47 years... If they can get an intact cell nucleus, they may try to clone the mammoth using an elephant egg and an elephant as a surrogate mother. Or they might use frozen sperm, if they can get any, to try to create an elephant-mammoth hybrid.
Reuters
October 21, 1999
[singing] We get wild, wild, wild...
PRESERVED T. Rex Soft Tissue RECOVERED (Pic)
Star Tribune | 03.24.05 | Randolph Schmid
Posted on 03/24/2005 12:04:54 PM PST by wallcrawlr
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1369945/posts
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