We Can Rebuild the Northern White Rhino—We Have the Technology. Scientists Have Transplanted Mammoth DNA Into Elephant Cells. A lot of people seem to be under the misconception that scientists want to clone mammoths to restore a wild population. No scientist is advocating for that; their environment doesn't exist any more. The first cloned mammoths would be used purely for research, and we're quite a ways off from mass cloning. If we ever do clone a long-extinct species on a large scale, they'd probably be reserved for zoos and wildlife parks and shit. I support cloning the mammoth for research purposes. I also want to add, as cloning technology improves, it could be used to help current endangered species. Flagged. Scientists Claim They Are Close To Cloning A Mammoth. Researchers examining easily the best preserved mammoth ever found believe it may be possible to clone the individual and bring the extinct species back to life. However, they acknowledge that what would be produced would not be the same creature as what went extinct 4000 years ago.
They have also sounded a note of caution on the ethics of such an operation. The cold temperatures in which mammoths lived and died mean they are often much better preserved than other species of equivalent age - but a specimen found last year in the Sakha Republic, eastern Siberia, is an exceptional case even for mammoths. “We have dissected the soft tissues of the mammoth - and I must say that we didn't expect such results. The carcass that is more than 43,000 years old has preserved better than a body of a human buried for six months,” said Viktoria Egorova, of the North-Eastern Federal University. “The tissue cut clearly shows blood vessels with strong walls. Photo Gallery. 700,000-Year-Old Horse Found in Yukon Permafrost Yields Oldest DNA Ever Decoded. The frozen remains of a horse more than half a million years old have reluctantly given up their genetic secrets, providing scientists with the oldest DNA ever sequenced.
The horse was discovered in 2003 in the ancient permafrost of Canada’s west-central Yukon Territory, not far from the Alaskan border. And although the animal was dated to between 560,000 and 780,000 years old, an international team of researchers was able to use a new combination of techniques to decipher its genetic code. Among the team’s findings is that the genus Equus — which includes all horses, donkeys, and zebras — dates back more than 4 million years, twice as long ago as scientists had previously believed. “When we started the project, everyone — including us, to be honest — thought it was impossible,” said Dr.
Ludovic Orlando of the University of Copenhagen, who coordinated the research, in a statement to Western Digs. “And it was to some extent, with the methods available by then. Frozen zoo. Zoos such as the San Diego Zoo[1] and research programs such as the Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species[2][3] cryopreserve genetic material in order to protect the diversity of the gene pool of endangered species, or to provide for a prospective reintroduction of such extinct species as the Tasmanian Tiger[4] and the Mammoth.[5] Frozen Zoo at San Diego Zoo Conservation Research has been freezing biological materials from animals and plants in liquid nitrogen (−196 °C) since 1976.[6] They currently store a collection of 8,400 samples from over 800 species and subspecies.[7] Frozen Zoo at San Diego Zoo Conservation Research has acted as a forbearer to similar projects at other zoos in the United States and Europe including the Frozen Ark Project.[8][9] However, there are still less than a dozen frozen zoos worldwide.[3] Creating a frozen zoo[edit] Gathering material for a frozen zoo is rendered simple by the abundance of sperm in males.
See also[edit] References[edit] Science/Nature | 'Frozen Ark' to save animal DNA. A tissue bank that will store genetic material from thousands of endangered animals has been set up in the UK. The Frozen Ark, as it is called, will preserve animal "life codes" even after their species have become extinct. This will allow future generations of scientists to understand long lost creatures, and may also help with the conservation programmes of tomorrow. The project is supported by the Natural History Museum, the Zoological Society of London and Nottingham University.
Sixth mass extinction? Scientists believe animals may be disappearing from our planet at a very high rate. Some even refer to this plunge in biodiversity as the Earth's "sixth mass extinction". Over the next 30 years, perhaps a quarter of all known mammals and a tenth of all recorded bird species could die out - as result of rapid climate change and habitat loss. A multitude of less charismatic insects, worms and spiders are also said to be teetering on the edge.
Tissue samples Future generations. The Frozen Zoo aiming to bring endangered species back from the brink | Environment | The Observer. The inside of a metal box filled with liquid nitrogen and frozen to -173C (-280F) is hardly the ideal habitat for a large African mammal. But, as a test tube is fished out of the frigid container amid a billowing cloud of white gas, a note written on its side is unequivocal about its contents.
"This is a northern white rhino," says Scripps research scientist Inbar Ben-Nun as she reads out the label and holds the freezing vial with thick gloves that look like industrial-grade oven mitts. Ben-Nun is holding no ordinary scientific sample. For the frozen cells in that test tube could one day give rise to baby northern white rhinos and help save the species from extinction. They would be living specimens of one of the most endangered species on Earth, who after a few months would be trotting into wildlife parks, and maybe, just maybe, helping repopulate their kind on the African grasslands. No wonder that the place where the sample came from is called the Frozen Zoo.
Resurrection Biology: How to Bring Animals Back From Extinction. Facebook. Candidate species | Revive & Restore. Criteria are emerging for determining which animal species are possible candidates for genetic rescue or genetic assistance. The animals pictured below may meet some or all of these criteria. All images are from Wikipedia and are in the public domain. Each image is a link to the candidate’s Wikipedia page. Candidate Species for De-extinction: Cuban red macaw Ivory billed woodpecker Imperial woodpecker Heath hens Labrador duck Dodo Great Auk New Zealand giant moa Madagascar elephant bird Huia (New Zealand) O’o (Hawaii) Woolly mammoth Woolly rhinoceros Irish elk Easter Island palm Xerces blue butterfly Quagga (plains zebra) Auroch Pyrenean ibex (bucardo) Thylacine (Tasmanian tiger) Steller’s sea cow Caribbean monk seal Candidate Species for Genetic Assistance: Hawaiian Crow Attwater’s Prairie Chicken Hawaiian honeycreeper Crested Ibis New Zealand Kakapo Black-footed ferret Amphibians Bats Golden Lion Tamarin Cheetah Northern White Rhino Hirola Javan rhinoceros Sumatran rhinoceros Yangtze giant softshell turtle Arabian Oryx.
Resurrecting the Extinct Frog with a Stomach for a Womb. Two years ago, Mike Archer from the University of New South Wales looked down a microscope and saw that a single fertilised frog egg had divided in two. Then, it did it again. And again. Eventually, the egg produced an embryo containing hundreds of cells. “There were a lot of hi-fives going around the laboratory,” says Archer. This might seem like an over-reaction.
After all, millions of frog eggs divide into embryos every day, as they have done since before dinosaurs walked the earth. The fact that it started to grow into an embryo was a big deal. Archer’s goal is simple: To bring the extinct gastric brooding frog back from oblivion and, in doing so, provide hope for the hundreds of other frogs that are heading that way. Frozen southern gastric brooding frog. Stomach for a womb The southern gastric brooding frog (Rheobatrachus silus) was discovered in 1972 in the mountains of Queensland, Australia. Simply put, the mother frog converts her stomachs into a womb. They didn’t have long.
Russian scientists revive an ice age flower. A plant that was frozen in Siberian permafrost for about 30,000 years has been revived by a team of Russian scientists — and borne fruit, to boot. Using tissue from immature fruits buried in fossil squirrel burrows some 90 feet below the surface, researchers from the Russian Academy of Sciences in Pushchino managed to coax the frozen remains of a Silene stenophylla specimen into full flower, producing delicate white blooms and then fruit. The findings, published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describe what is a record for reviving presumably dead plant tissue — and may provide clues as to what makes some plants hardier and longer-lived than others. "I'm absolutely thrilled with the result," said Grant Zazula, a paleontologist with the Yukon government in Canada who reviewed the study for the journal. "I've always been excited for the potential of something like this being successful.
" amina.khan@latimes.com. 'I can create Neanderthal baby, I just need willing woman’ Scientists Clone Long-Dead Animal. Astounding even veterans of the fight against animal extinction, cloning technology has reproduced two endangered wild cattle bulls, each born to dairy cows last week on an Iowa farm. The procedure that created the bantengs has given animal conservationists hope that cross-species breeding can help reverse the daily disappearance of 100 living species and add genetic diversity to dwindling animal populations.
If they survive, the two bantengs will be transferred to the San Diego Wild Animal Park and encouraged to breed with the captive population there. The technology is still fraught with problems and a long way from paying significant dividends. The cloned bantengs, for instance, won't begin breeding until they reach maturity in about six years. Nonetheless, animal conservationists are excited about the two unnamed bantengs. "The fact that it can happen at all just astounds me," said Oliver Ryder, a geneticist at the San Diego Zoo's Center for Reproduction of Endangered Species. The Promise and Pitfalls of Resurrection Ecology. Every species becomes extinct eventually. Some leave descendants that continue the evolutionary proliferation of life that kicked off on this planet over 3.5 billion years ago, but no parent species is immortal.
Life on Earth is in continual flux, with new lineages emerging as others die back. But what if we could resurrect lost species? And even if we developed the technology to do so, are such efforts wise during a time when the same attention and energy could be applied to preventing extant species from slipping away? This Friday, researchers are going to converge at the TEDX DeExtinction symposium, partnered with National Geographic, to discuss the possibilities and pitfalls of reviving species that have been lost over the past 12,000 years.
The woolly mammoth – the shaggy Ice Age icon that persisted until a scant 3,700 years ago – is probably the most charismatic “deextinction” candidate. The long-fanged gape of Smilodon, on display at the Page Museum. How Whales Will Save The World – If We Let Them. Can we fact check this? "But despite the ability of 1500 penguins to eat the same food as a single blue whale, their biomass is only 8% of the whale. " I have a hard time buying the idea that a blue whale is more than 33,000 penguins. I'm not pooing on the idea completely, (save the whales) just the idea that they are better carbon sinks than 33,000 penguins merely because of their size. It's hard to weigh a blue whale, but a reasonable estimate for the mass of an average blue whale is on the order of 180 metric tons or 180,000 kilograms. 8% of that is 14,400. I'm not certain just how Roman and colleagues arrived at the 8% value, or what penguin species was used, but my quick back-of-the-envelope calculations for the second largest of the penguin species suggests its at least a reasonable estimate.
Stewart Brand: The dawn of de-extinction. Are you ready? How to Bring Back the Woolly Mammoth (Infographic) These are the steps that could, theoretically, allow an Asian elephant to give birth to a hybrid woolly mammoth, which could eventually breed with other hybrids to produce an animal that closely resembles the extinct species. A number of scientific hurdles, described below, still need to be overcome to make this a reality. 1. Map the woolly mammoth genome. Some of this work has already been done – researchers at Penn State University mapped roughly 70 percent of the woolly mammoth genome in 2008 using hairs from mammoths preserved in Siberian permafrost. 2. Determine how/where the woolly mammoth genome is different from the Asian elephant's, and change those genes accordingly. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Embed: Paste the code below into your site. De-extinction: Bite Sci-zed. Responce to De-Extinction Bit Sci-zed.
DNA has a 521-year half-life. Genetic material can't be recovered from dinosaurs — but it lasts longer than thought. Palaeogeneticist Morten Allentoft used the bones of extinct moa birds to calculate the half-life of DNA. Credit: M. Møhl Few researchers have given credence to claims that samples of dinosaur DNA have survived to the present day, but no one knew just how long it would take for genetic material to fall apart. Now, a study of fossils found in New Zealand is laying the matter to rest — and putting an end to hopes of cloning a Tyrannosaurus rex.
After cell death, enzymes start to break down the bonds between the nucleotides that form the backbone of DNA, and micro-organisms speed the decay. In the long run, however, reactions with water are thought to be responsible for most bond degradation. Determining that rate has been difficult because it is rare to find large sets of DNA-containing fossils with which to make meaningful comparisons.
About this article Cite this article Kaplan, M. Download citation. De-Extinction: Can Cloning Bring Extinct Species Back to Life? | Extinction Countdown. A museum specimen of an extinct passenger pigeon At some point in the next decade, if advances in biotechnology continue on their current path, clones of extinct species such as the passenger pigeon, Tasmanian tiger and wooly mammoth could once again live among us.
But cloning lost species—or “de-extinction” as some scientists call it—presents us with myriad ethical, legal and regulatory questions that must be answered, such as which (if any) species should be brought back and whether or not such creatures could be allowed to return to the wild. Such questions are set to be addressed March 15 at TEDx DeExtinction, a day-long event in Washington, D.C., organized by Stewart Brand’s Revive & Restore project. Brand previewed the topics for discussion last week at the TED2013 conference in Long Beach, Calif. Cloning extinct species has been tried before—with moderate success.
What do you think? Photo: An extinct passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) by Gary Palmer via Flickr.