Sunday, September 16, 2012

Mammoths: Coming Soon to Your Planet!

Picture of scientists doing stuff to a mammoth carcass

Since the time of Jurassic Park, people have found it mind-boggling that we can reintroduce a species to the planet. Now, as you read this sentence with in the two weeks or so of me posting this, scientists are combining cells and Deoxyribo Nucleic Acid to try and make the first mammoth egg cell the world has seen within the last few (thousand) years. 

How To Get A Mammoth Egg Cell (Theoretical So Far)

Need:
Bunch of science tools and test tubes, etc..
1 living mammoth cell (Recently found 100m under solid ice, so well preserved it still has fatty tissue, hair, and bone marrow-conveniently)

Steps:

Step 1: Check to see if cells are - infact - living.
Step 2: Extract living cell's Nuclei
Step 3: Extract DNA from an elephant egg cell; elephants being the closest relative to the mammoth.
Step 4: Place mammoth genes into the elephant egg cell.
Step 5: Put egg cell back in elephant and let a male elephant do his stuff
Step 6: Have the elephant give birth to a mammoth (like a human giving birth to a chimp)
Step 7: Success! You now have a mammoth!

There are some factors which make the birth unlikely eg: the mother rejects the egg/the cells are too dead/it just simply doesn't work. People in charge of the project aren't even 100% sure what they are going to do with another species. Either way, the planet might just change in a few years. 

No comments:

Post a Comment