Long gone are the days in which the great Woolly Mammoth tramped upon the edge of the Earth, yet a new discovery in the labs of a university in Japan generates hope that those days will witness a come-back.
About four million years ago, mammoths first appeared in Africa as a generalized species of elephants, and then divided into several species as they adapted to new environments and spread widely across Europe. The average mammoth was about eleven feet tall and weighed about seventy tons. It was never agreed upon whether this astonishing creature’s extinction was due to climate change or human hunters, and this new advancement in biology pushes scientists one step closer to finding out.
A team of Japanese genetic researchers, lead by Akira Iritani of Kyoto University, aims to retrieve DNA from the hairs and tissues of a 20,000 year-old and another 60,000 year-old mammoth preserved in the Siberian permafrost. The plan is to extract a sperm from one of these mammoths and to inseminate it into an Elephant’s womb, being the closest live relative of the mammoth, thus allowing it to conceive a live baby mammoth. Preceding attempts of recovering nuclei and genetic material from frozen tissue have been unsuccessful as a result of the damage the cold temperature has afflicted on the DNA. However, the new technique adopted by the Japanese scientist and researcher Teruhiko Wakayama has overcome this technical problem and has successfully been able to clone a mouse from the cells of a mouse that has been frozen for sixteen years.
The Japanese scientists predict their experiment will be complete and ready to set in action within an estimated term of five or six years, however, there are many obstacles hindering this discovery. Although the researchers have completed eighty percent of the DNA set required, fungi and bacteria could have contaminated the remaining or existing databases hence making the goal unattainable. Also, until now, the research is yet anticipating further funding and financial support in order to fulfill the experiment. Many mammoth experts ridicule the mere idea of it, deeming it scientifically unachievable and ethically irresponsible seeing that the mammoth’s natural habitat no longer exists, and it would be immoral to subject it to the harsh living conditions for the sake of public display.
Iritani answers to these objections by announcing that they will discuss what methods will be used to breed the mammoth and whether or not it would be available for public display once they have created an embryo. Iritani seems confident of success as he looks forward to examining the ecology and genes of the species and clarifying the reason behind its extinction.
And that is how the great Woolly Mammoth will be resurrected – Well, kind of.
