A group of Harvard researchers announced that they are on the cusp of a unique scientific discovery. Scientists are preparing for the revival of a long-extinct animal species - large mammoths.
Cloning
Researchers who have been working on a mammoth cloning program for several years now believe that they are only a few years from creating a functioning embryo, which will be injected with mammoth genes.
It is difficult to imagine cloning a full-fledged mammoth due to the lack of genetic material, but this does not stop American and Korean scientists.
Large mammoths
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It is not at all easy to return long-extinct animals from the historical and biological abyss.
The mammoth is an ideal candidate for the first ever cloning revival. Thanks to the fact that enough remains of these animals survived on Earth, scientists were able to restore the complete DNA chain of the mammoth. In addition, his closest descendants, Asian and African elephants, still live on the planet.
Cloning methods
There is still debate around the issue of mammoth revival, namely how best to clone an animal.
The main problem is the lack of suitable genetic material for cloning. Despite the fact that a lot of animal muscle tissue was found, most of its DNA was destroyed due to prolonged exposure to low temperatures.
A team of South Korean researchers hopes to find enough material to completely restore the DNA and clone the mammoth in its original form one hundred percent. But a group of scientists from Harvard offers a different approach.
Gene modification
The Harvard team is genetically modifying the elephant's genome, replacing some of the genes with the genes of the large mammoth. Essentially, scientists are trying to manually reconstruct the mammoth genome. The resulting organism, of course, will not be an exact copy of the extinct animal, but it will have many of the external characteristics of mammoths.
Harvard scientists want to implant the engineered mammoth genome into an Asian elephant embryo. This could happen, they said, in the next two years. However, there is no guarantee that the result will be positive. It is likely that we will have to wait about ten more years before we can see with our own eyes the long-extinct mammoths.
Hope Chikanchi