Cloning the Woolly Mammoth

Clone the Woolly Mammoth? First you have to find one that is intact. Done!! This year a French expedition found a fully preserved carcass of a 20,000 year old mammoth frozen in the Siberian permafrost. Japanese scientists hope to either clone the mammoth or produce a hybrid. To produce a hybrid, one only needs viable sperm, preferably sperm containing the X chromosome.

• What is the probability that viable mammoth sperm or eggs can be found?
• How quickly would the tissue have to freeze to be properly preserved?
• What other conditions are necessary to have adequately preserved gonads or gametes?
• What experiments could you do to determine if the chromosomes in mammoth gonads are viable?

Since the sperm is technically dead when it fuses with the egg plasma membrane, is should be possible to find intact DNA, inject it into an elephant egg and then give it an electrical shock to stimulate the development process and then place the egg into a female elephant. And wait 600 days. If a female mammoth-elephant hybrid is born, then it could be impregnated with more mammoth sperm or DNA.

• Often a hybrid is reproductively sterile. Why?

Even if the hybrid is not sterile, it will take 10 to 15 years for the offspring to be reproductively active. Much too long to wait for the average human. Therefore the possibility holds much more promise. The techniques they would use to produce a woolly mammoth clone are the same mentioned earlier.

• Do you think it is ethical to clone an animal that has been extinct since the last ice age?
• As an ecologist, what problems would there be in reintroducing the woolly mammoth to the grasslands of the world?

Cloning could be used to protect endangered species. Some animals that could be clones are the Sumatran rhinoceroses, Asiatic wild asses, Przewalski's horses, river dolphins, cheetahs, mountain gorillas, etc. The list is long.