Woolly Mammoths: a Step Closer to Jurassic-Park-Like Recreation

A recent posting from the popular science website IFLScience  entitled  "Scientists Successfully Insert Woolly Mammoth DNA into Elephant Genome" has allowed for Jurassic Park dreams to come to life. Recently, a team of Harvard geneticists lead by George Church have been able to successfully implant Woolly Mammoths genes into the elephant genome. Woolly Mammoths, one of the more well-known extinct species, appeared around 2 million years ago and went extinct around 4,000 years ago after the last surviving population died out on an Island in the Arctic Ocean about 6,000 years after the majority of their species. Because Woolly Mammoths lived primarily in tundra landscapes, many of their carcasses have been discovered in excellent condition due to the protection the permafrost offered them from decomposition. While their bodies remained fairly intact, their DNA was not as lasting. DNA degrades over time, icy preservation or not, thus leading to mere shards of the Mammoth genome being discovered with the carcasses. While this seems like a discouraging issue, Church’s team as well as others, have been looking to merge some of the fragmented bits of genetic material found with the genome of the Woolly Mammoths most closely related living species, the Asian elephant. Using relatively new techniques to carefully cut at the elephant genome, Church’s team was able to successfully insert 14 Woolly Mammoth genes into the DNA of living elephant cells, focusing on genes associated with surviving in frigid landscapes. The Mammoth DNA shreds were extracted from some of latest surviving Woolly Mammoths, those that had survived past most of their species on Wrangle Island in the Arctic Ocean. The elephant cells with inserted Mammoth DNA have been successfully functioning, Church reported to the Sunday Times . While this experiment is certainly revolutionary, Church and his team have yet to publish their work in any science journal because, as Church says, “there is more work to do”. As in the case of Jurassic Park, this work brings up the ethics behind recreating an extinct species. While Church believes the reintroduction of Woolly Mammoths may help the declining Siberian permafrost , there is also debate against recreating this ancient species and the ethics of “playing God” (the irony of Church’s last name really adds to this argument, in my opinion).