{"id":1270,"date":"2024-01-20T15:33:49","date_gmt":"2024-01-20T12:33:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/?p=1270"},"modified":"2025-11-20T12:40:27","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T09:40:27","slug":"getting-closer-to-jurassic-park-harvard-scientists-clone-mammoths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/2024\/01\/20\/getting-closer-to-jurassic-park-harvard-scientists-clone-mammoths\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting closer to Jurassic Park – Harvard scientists clone mammoths"},"content":{"rendered":"

The woolly mammoth shares 99.6% of its DNA with the Asian elephant, leading scientists to believe they are well on their way to achieving their goal. \u201cIn the minds of many, this animal has disappeared forever. But not in the minds of our scientists and not in the laboratories of our company. We are already in the process of resurrecting the woolly mammoth. Our teams have collected viable DNA samples and are editing genes that will allow this remarkable megafauna to roam the Arctic again.\u201d The long-extinct woolly mammoth will return from oblivion by 2027, according to Colossal, a biotech company actively working on the reincarnation of the ancient beast.<\/p>\n

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Harvard University genetics professor George Church, known for his pioneering work in genome sequencing and gene splicing, hopes the company can usher in an era when mammoths will \u201cwalk the Arctic tundra again.\u201d He and other researchers also hope the revived species could play a role in the fight against climate change.<\/p>\n

Colossal believes that the woolly mammoth’s extensive migration routes are an active part of maintaining the health of the Arctic, so bringing the animal back to life could have a beneficial effect on the health of the world’s ecosystem. While Colossal initially hoped to return the woolly mammoth to Siberia, the company may explore other options based on the current political situation in the world.<\/div>\n

\u201cWe are working to bring back species that have left an ecological void when they went extinct. As Colossal actively works to conserve endangered species, we are identifying species that can be given a new set of tools from their extinct relatives to enable them to survive in new environments that desperately need them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The future clone will be a hybrid, created using a gene-editing tool known as CRISPR-Cas9 to splice DNA fragments extracted from frozen mammoth samples with DNA from the Asian elephant, the mammoth’s closest living relative. The resulting animal, known as a “mammoth”, would look and presumably act like a woolly mammoth.<\/p>\n

Church and others believe the mammoth’s resurgence will plug the hole in the ecosystem left by their extinction about 10,000 years ago (though some isolated populations are thought to have remained in Siberia until about 1700 B.C.). The largest mammoths stood over 10 feet tall at the shoulder and are believed to have weighed as much as 15 tons.<\/p>\n

According to the researchers, mammoths scraped away layers of snow so that cold air could reach the soil and maintain permafrost. After they disappeared, the accumulated snow and its insulating properties caused the permafrost to warm, releasing greenhouse gases, Church and others say. They claim that returning mammoths, or at least hybrids that would fill the same ecological niche, to the Arctic could reverse this trend.<\/p>\n

Lav Dahlen, professor of evolutionary genetics at the Stockholm Center for Paleogenetics, is skeptical of this claim: “Personally, I don’t think it will have any impact, any measurable impact, on the rate of climate change in the future, even if it is successful.” , he told NPR. \u201cThere is virtually no evidence to support the hypothesis that trampling very large numbers of mammoths would have any effect on climate change, and it might as well, in my opinion, have a negative effect on temperatures.\u201d<\/p>\n

A big obstacle to the return of the species may be the creation of an artificial uterus for bearing embryos. Even Church admits it may not be that simple. Among other things, the company plans to create a \u201cpumping system for the exchange of gas, nutrients and waste metabolites, as well as the umbilical cord blood supply for the purpose of carrying the woolly mammoth embryo to term in vitro.\u201d Researchers are working on just such a device, but technical obstacles remain.<\/div>\n

A woolly mammoth embryo will be placed into an African elephant to take advantage of its size and allow it to give birth to a new woolly mammoth. The ultimate goal is to then repopulate parts of the Arctic with new woolly mammoths and strengthen native plant life through the beast’s migration patterns and feeding habits.<\/p>\n

Since launching in 2021, Colossal Biosciences has raised $225 million for its research.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The woolly mammoth shares 99.6% of its DNA with the Asian elephant, leading scientists to believe they are well on their way to achieving their goal. \u201cIn the minds of many, this animal has disappeared forever. But not in the minds of our scientists and not in the laboratories of our company. We are already in the process of resurrecting the woolly mammoth. Our teams have collected viable DNA samples and are editing genes that will allow this remarkable megafauna to roam the Arctic again.\u201d The long-extinct woolly mammoth will return from oblivion by 2027, according to Colossal, a biotech company actively working on the reincarnation of the ancient beast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1271,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,540],"tags":[311,557,291],"class_list":{"0":"post-1270","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-biotechnology","9":"tag-clone","10":"tag-mammoth","11":"tag-warming"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1270"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1272,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270\/revisions\/1272"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}