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posted by martyb on Friday March 15 2019, @02:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the an-old-piano-in-a-tree dept.

If you remember in 2017, it was predicted Resurrection of the Woolly Mammoth Could Begin in Two Years.

Well it's 2019, and now that it is two years later... and so they have, of course, accomplished nothing of the sort are working on it.

[...] researchers extracted cells from Yuka, a woolly mammoth mummy (Mammuthus primigenius) whose remains were discovered in the Siberian permafrost in 2011. Then, the scientists recovered the least-damaged nuclei (structures that contain genetic material) from each cell and popped the nuclei into mouse eggs.

At first, this maneuver "activated" the mammoth chromosomes, as several biological reactions that occur before cell division actually happened within the mouse cell. But these reactions soon came to a crashing halt, probably, in part, because the mammoth DNA was severely damaged after spending 28,000 years buried in permafrost, the researchers said.

Beth Shapiro, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not part of the study, commented:

at first, the cellular machinery did try to fix damaged DNA within the chromosomes and piece together the broken bits [...] "But [the egg] can only do so much, [...] When the nuclei are badly damaged, then it's just not possible to reconstitute this to what you would need to do to actually bring it back to life."

According to Shapiro:

"The results presented here clearly show us again the de facto impossibility to clone the mammoth by current NT [nuclear-transfer] technology," the researchers wrote in the study, published online March 11 in the journal Scientific Reports.

However that does not mean all is lost,

Other research groups are also trying to resurrect the mammoth, using different technology. George Church, a geneticist at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is heading the Harvard Woolly Mammoth Revival team, is taking one approach. He's using CRISPR — a tool that can edit DNA's bases, or letters — to insert woolly mammoth genes into the DNA of Asian elephants, which are closely related to the extinct animals.

All of this is not without the usual controversies, but it will certainly be an accomplishment should they succeed.

For those who are unaware, there is a nibble of truth to Pliny the Elder's assertion in A.D. 77 that Elephants hate mice, as it turns out Elephants will definitely avoid the heck out of mice in the wild.

Considering the close relationship of elephants and mammoths, perhaps mixing their bits together with mice is not the best approach?


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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Freeman on Friday March 15 2019, @03:43PM (5 children)

    by Freeman (732) on Friday March 15 2019, @03:43PM (#814821) Journal

    Depends on your view of how the dinosaurs came about. There are some who believe that part of the reason the world was destroyed by the flood is due to genetic manipulations. I.E. playing god with genetics and creating the dinosaurs. Along with all the rest of the horrible things they were doing to each other. Consider that according to the Bible we were created to be perfect beings, were something like 15ft tall or whatever. I.E. prime specimens of humans. Now, why would there be such weird amalgamations of humans like what are purported to be Neanderthals. Here's a hint, crazy evil people, playing with genetics to cross humans with animals.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Friday March 15 2019, @07:10PM (2 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 15 2019, @07:10PM (#814970) Journal

    I think I have a decent working knowledge of the text of the Bible.

    playing god with genetics and creating the dinosaurs

    I've heard that before. I don't see support for it in the text, at least not the "66 books" text protestants use. Would be interesting if they are talking about genetic manipulation done by technology. But then I would expect that level of technology to require sufficient infrastructure that we would find archeological evidence. A nut or bolt or washer or wire somewhere.

    Along with all the rest of the horrible things they were doing to each other.

    That appears to the the primary reason expressly stated in the text for the great flood.

    Consider that according to the Bible we were created to be perfect beings

    Whether true or not, the text indicates (in the POV of the text) that we were created sinless. But within fewer chapters than you can count on one hand, we proved far, far from perfect.

    were something like 15ft tall or whatever. I.E. prime specimens of humans.

    Interesting. I don't know of support for the 15 foot tall in the 66 books. And I'm not familiar with other material, such as The Book of Enoch and other sources. I have considered reading Enoch, but haven't yet. (I've also considered giving the Quoran a complete read, but haven't.)

    Here's a hint, crazy evil people, playing with genetics to cross humans with animals.

    In the view of people purporting that, might they be thinking of non-humans playing with genetics? Just curious. I assume they are referencing first verses in Genesis 6.

    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

    If we humans play with genetics in the 21st century, I'm sure nothing could ever possibly go wrong. It will be as safe as Windows, a 737 MAX, or Russia in the 90s using Excel to track inventory of nuclear missiles.

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    • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday March 16 2019, @02:54AM (1 child)

      by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Saturday March 16 2019, @02:54AM (#815232) Homepage Journal

      I met her at Starbucks; despite being a well-read Muslim she was unfamiliar with the concept of The People Of The Book, that Book having three volumes: Torah, The New Testament and the Noble Quran.

      "Isa" in Arabic, Islam regards him as a mortal prophet, but a divinely inspired one. It happens that the Quran discusses Isa quite a lot.

      As a popular activity during Ramadan is to read the Noble Quran all the way through, I suggest it's not as weighty as the sixty-six books.

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      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday March 18 2019, @01:50PM

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 18 2019, @01:50PM (#816391) Journal

        Was she familiar what is to be done to "The People Of The Book"? It is somewhat different than "love your neighbor".

        The Quran discusses "Isa" in a way that is mutually exclusive with how Christianity discusses Jesus.

        The Quran is shorter.

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  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Friday March 15 2019, @10:02PM

    by Bot (3902) on Friday March 15 2019, @10:02PM (#815115) Journal

    I have already commented about this but the flood is fascinating. The shape of the continents today is one of a smaller sphere broken up by expansion [youtube.com] . A smaller sphere would spin faster to conserve momentum so people would more easily get to mathusalem-tier ages because there would be shorter days. And the bible says before the flood people lived way longer. The bible says there won't be another flood. So I like to think of something inside the earth producing lots of water as a byproduct and breaking it up, and slowing it down. The flood is also not an exclusive tale of the bible.

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  • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday March 16 2019, @02:50AM

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Saturday March 16 2019, @02:50AM (#815230) Homepage Journal

    Consider that along with the Mammii, we've been dig up ancient viruses, some of them oddly quite large.

    So far those virii are harmless to humans.

    So far.

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