The recent discovery of another frozen mammoth has already generated a scientific discussion: for example, scientists cannot understand how the animal's blood could remain liquid under the ice for millennia.
Russian mammoths, a favorite topic of news agencies, are again on the ridge: paleontologists have found another mammoth (more precisely, a female mammoth) in Siberia, but this time with meat and liquid blood. In some places, you can see photographs of pieces of ink with reddish tissues and test tubes with a certain brown liquid.
This liquid, according to the head of the paleontological expedition, Semyon Grigoriev from the North-Eastern Federal University (Russia), is nothing more than blood that has accumulated in the ice cavities formed under the belly of a dead animal.
The fact that the blood did not freeze at -10 ˚C is quite surprising. And this made the researchers assume the presence of some kind of cryoprotective substances in mammoths.
In general, this 10,000-year-old mammoth, who died at the age of 50-60, surpassed even Lyuba Sibirskaya, found in 2007, in terms of safety. Of course, reports immediately appeared that herds of mammoths would soon move across the Earth. Why don't we clone them, since we already have such well-preserved blood and meat at hand, right?
However, the press is the press, and experts have already managed, so to speak, to ask the next mammoth many questions. Daniel Fisher, a mammoth dock from the University of Michigan (USA), who also once worked with Mr. Grigoriev, points out some inaccuracies and exaggerations, which he, however, generously ascribes to "translation difficulties" from Russian.
Firstly, this is not the first adult female mammoth that falls into the hands of scientists, but the first find with such a large amount of soft tissues (here you need to understand exactly what we mean by safety, at what level - at the level of the general anatomy of the body or at the level of tissues and organs). Secondly, there cannot be any "living cells", but there can be cells whose DNA is suitable for a variety of molecular genetic procedures, including cloning. (Typically, the DNA in such ancient finds is highly fragmented and cannot be used to program the embryo.)
As for the blood, Mr. Fischer, who had to see the clotted blood in the vessels of frozen mammoths, does not undertake to comment on what kind of liquid is shown to us in the above-mentioned "fleshy" pictures. The find is certainly interesting, but first you need to find out exactly what exactly is contained in this sample before saying the word "blood".
Promotional video:
Mammoth blood.
On the other hand, physiologist Kevin Campbell from the University of Manitoba (Canada) argues that mammoth blood proteins have adapted to perform their functions in conditions of severe hypothermia. Mr. Campbell has a past history of research on proteins in mammoth red blood cells. It was possible to recreate these proteins again with the help of DNA from fossil finds, that is, his competence is beyond doubt. It is possible, says Campbell, that these proteins have preserved intact red blood cells in the blood. According to the color of the sample, the scientist continues, it can be assumed that quite a lot of hemoglobin and, possibly, myoglobin are preserved in it.
The researchers who made the find spoke with Kevin Campbell about the frost resistance of this blood. As it turned out, she did not freeze even at –17 ˚C. Nevertheless, there are rather big doubts that this is due to some kind of antifreeze substances. Indeed, many animals produce special peptides and glycoproteins that keep the water in the body liquid at temperatures below freezing. The problem, however, is that no such antifreeze has yet been found among mammals. (Even in the Arctic long-tailed ground squirrel, whose blood temperature in the abdominal region sometimes drops to –2.9 ˚C, these antifreeze substances are still being sought, although it is likely that they really are.)
Here, first of all, it is embarrassing that the blood remained liquid even at such low temperatures. On the one hand, it is possible that there are cryoprotectants in it, and over time they are simply very strongly concentrated in a small volume. But on the other hand, it can be assumed that part of the water from the blood went into the surrounding ice, and in the remaining salt, proteins and other molecules were so strongly concentrated that they played the role of antifreeze (after all, a high concentration of salts, as everyone knows, really lowers the freezing point). Finally, one cannot disregard the bacterial contamination, due to which cryoprotectants could appear in the samples, only not of mammoth, but of bacterial origin.
There are other, no less interesting and important questions regarding the find: for example, why did the blood remain in liquid form for so long? Why didn't we find anything similar in other excavated mammoths? However, despite the questions, the significance of the find is enormous, everyone admits it. Both Mr. Fisher and Mr. Campbell are now intensively communicating with Semyon Grigoriev, amicably claiming that the new (so far unnamed) mammoth will help make a breakthrough in both mammoth science and evolutionary science.
As for the reasoning about cloning, then, of course, one cannot but admit that one wants to look at a living mammoth extremely, but it is hardly worth restoring the entire species - for purely ecological reasons.
Based on Scientific American and Northeastern Federal University.