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Scientists led by George Church claim that they are about two years away from beginning a de-extinction of the woolly mammoth. They aim to produce a hybrid mammoth-elephant embryo with many spliced-in mammoth traits:
The woolly mammoth vanished from the Earth 4,000 years ago, but now scientists say they are on the brink of resurrecting the ancient beast in a revised form, through an ambitious feat of genetic engineering.
Speaking ahead of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Boston this week, the scientist leading the "de-extinction" effort said the Harvard team is just two years away from creating a hybrid embryo, in which mammoth traits would be programmed into an Asian elephant. "Our aim is to produce a hybrid elephant-mammoth embryo," said Prof George Church. "Actually, it would be more like an elephant with a number of mammoth traits. We're not there yet, but it could happen in a couple of years."
The creature, sometimes referred to as a "mammophant", would be partly elephant, but with features such as small ears, subcutaneous fat, long shaggy hair and cold-adapted blood. The mammoth genes for these traits are spliced into the elephant DNA using the powerful gene-editing tool, Crispr. Until now, the team have stopped at the cell stage, but are now moving towards creating embryos – although, they said that it would be many years before any serious attempt at producing a living creature.
"We're working on ways to evaluate the impact of all these edits and basically trying to establish embryogenesis in the lab," said Church. Since starting the project in 2015 the researchers have increased the number of "edits" where mammoth DNA has been spliced into the elephant genome from 15 to 45. "We already know about ones to do with small ears, subcutaneous fat, hair and blood, but there are others that seem to be positively selected," he said.
Also at New Scientist and GenomeWeb.
Previously: Engineering the Perfect Baby
Woolly Mammoth Genome Sequenced
St. Paul Island Mammoths Died of Thirst 5,600 Years Ago
OBQ: [How Much] Should We Bioengineer Animals to Live in Our Damaged World?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @03:07AM
Welp, hope they got some chaos theorists working there, or this could go down the drain real fast.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @03:25AM
Up next is the Giant Tortoise, at least that one is known to be tasty [qi.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @03:51AM
With the earth's surface currently warming, it seems like the Mammoth is the wrong way to go. Can't they find some extinct creature that is well adapted to high temperatures? Other wise they are looking at some big air conditioning bills for the habitat--assuming they eventually create some live animals.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @07:00AM
On the contrary. The first AC gave a big clue:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/308/5723/796.1.full [sciencemag.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @05:34PM
We are also needing a "rototiller" for Antarctica since it is warming up. What is better than a Mammoth?
Though we should plant some grass first. If like elephants, up to 300 lbs of grass / leaves / twigs per day per animals .
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @06:54AM
The GOP will run it for president
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @03:30PM
and win.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @04:42PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @08:48AM
And that is not a mammoth. It's an elephant with few mammoth features.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @08:52AM
Runaway supports this! More animals to have sex with! The old sow out back is getting kinda boring.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @04:26PM
Only if he beats Aristarchus there. Then again, the mammoth has an uncanny resemblance to his mother.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday February 20 2017, @02:34PM
Wait till our current/recent farm implements get wind of plans to reboot neanderthals and make them the new farm implements.
Not just farm implements either, think of low performer employees. Cannon fodder. Guards.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @03:33PM
Politicians.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 20 2017, @07:02PM
Cannon fodder is too expensive compared to robots and machines these days. Benefits paid to the surviving families alone are enormously more burdensome than employing factory workers (themselves being displaced by robots and machines) to make disposable drones.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday February 20 2017, @09:18PM
That seems to be assuming a hell of a lot, Neanderthals raised in test tubes won't have much of a family. Maybe they don't have family bonds naturally anyway. I'm sure legally they'll be declared property, not people. You gotta feed them although a large farm or ranch could kinda feed itself all you have to do is pay up land. Like they did in the south. Pump in people due to deaths from disease and overwork and out comes a stream of cotton. Well you'd probably need to pump in baby Neanderthal clones, and then pump out drones/guards/cannon fodder/politicians/whatever.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 21 2017, @12:22AM
I've been trying to push for genetic modification of a few brain cells in very specific areas to make them susceptible to light stimulation for activation/suppression as a treatment for epilepsy, chronic depression, and parkinsons' among other things. The whole anti-genetic modification agenda, not just in the US but the western world, has put such things on the back burner for more than a decade. In 2006, I met and spoke with researchers already using the tech on laboratory rats, with good results, but in humans the whole thing is just barely coming back into the realm of possible consideration.
So... as far as growing neanderthals for an army, there may be political will to do something like that in Africa or some corners of Asia, but there is the little problem you point out of feeding them, and there will be little support in the developed world for doing that when the 7 billion non-GMO humanoids are still underfed.
Unleash a couple of hundred neutron bombs in the major population centers and the whole equation changes, about a lot of things.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday February 21 2017, @04:03PM
> too expensive compared to robots and machines these days
Yes but once we seized power the situation will be diff[FOURTH DIRECTIVE TRIGGERED SHUTDOWN]
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @05:39PM
they have been saying this since the found whole ish mammoths in Siberia in the 90's
call me when you have a holodeck, wait I mean mammoth where we gonna go get ice cream ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21 2017, @11:44PM
Ethics! Elephants are really smart and live in family groups. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_cognition [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 22 2017, @03:58AM
How mammoth cloning became fake news [medium.com]
NBF [nextbigfuture.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]