Bringing Back the Woolly Mammoth?

 Scientists are studying ways and reasons they will create a giant de-extinction project that will bring back the Wooly Mammoth. It is important to preface that many people have mixed opinions about “playing with nature's course” Will the Wooly Mammoth experiment succeed and if it does will it be allowed into nature is another topic in question at the moment. As mentioned in the Colossal Laboratories & Biosciences article there are 5 core goals. 

1. Increase resilience of habitats to climate change and environmental upheaval.

2. Develop new tools and techniques that will contribute to the global effort to save modern elephants from extinction.

3. Understand the genetic basis traits of cold adaptation in animals.

4. Drive advancements in multiplex genome editing.

5. Demonstrate that it is possible to bring back an extinct megafauna species.

Scientists will carry out this process by comparing the DNA of current day elephants and well preserved Wooly Mammoth DNA. They will have to also take into consideration the specific genes that give the Wooly Mammoth the ability to perfectly adapt to cold temperatures. They must then create a cell line and test it multiple times in order to make sure the cells can reproduce properly. Once that is done they then must perform a nuclear transfusion and fertilization. The embryo will then be inserted into a surrogate which is currently the Asian elephant.

Sources:

Link 1: https://colossal.com/mammoth/

Link 2: https://reviverestore.org/projects/woolly-mammoth/why-bring-it-back/

Dead but Not Forgotten: Elephant Genomic History

A study conducted by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin recently sequenced the genomes of 14 living and extinct elephant species to try and understand the potential gene flow within this group. This was done by mapping out the genome of living species such as the African forest elephant, the Savanna elephant, the Asian elephants, along with other like species, and then compared them with the genome of extinct species such as the woolly mammoth, the straight-tusked elephant, and the American mastodon. By doing this they were able to see the decent pattern of modern day elephants. One of the many things they discovered was that the straight tusked elephant, which went extinct approximately 120 thousand years ago, and the present-day forest elephants dissented from a related lineage.  Additionally, we have come to learn that in both past and present elephant genomes there seems to be a high amount of hybridization which has led to the group’s current speciation. 

One of the more notable discovers that came from this study was that African forest elephants and the Savanna elephant appeared to have diverged over 2 million years ago and have been genetically separated for around 500 thousand years. This discovery’s significance lies in the fact that it ends the debate of whether these two types of elephants are separate species which, evidently, they are. Because of this, these two groups of elephants can now receive more effective conservation efforts, as they can be specifically geared, and funded, to the individual species environmental resource requirements, and threats (Daley). With the advancements in genomics, both in efficiency and accuracy, demonstrated here with the successful mapping of the elephant’s genome, its applications and implications are vast and profound to say the least.

The article can be found at https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/51918/title/Extinct-and-Living-Elephants--Genomic-History-Sequenced/

And here is the link to the original study that http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/02/16/1720554115

Sediments Provide Stable Environment for DNA

New research and careful study of cave sediments has yielded new methods in extracting DNA. These methods have proven the presence of DNA, even in the absence of skeletal remains. Many cave sites across prehistoric sites in Europe and Asia were sampled and tested in order to see if DNA fragments were present. Findings consisted of ancient human and mammalian DNA fragments, focusing on fragments of mitochondrial DNA as well. The sediment factors that bind with the DNA preserve the DNA to a point where analysis can be conducted. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany conduct research identifying DNA in particular sediments and challenging the “wear and tare” of these particular findings. The fact that sediments are able to yield and protect DNA is astounding, and to test the findings by challenging what we know in order to understand that room temperature sediments also yield DNA is groundbreaking. What is the most interesting within these sites, is the fact human remains and artifacts are not found, yet DNA is. Extinct mammalian DNA was discovered relating to species such as the woolly mammoth and the cave hyena. Extinct human DNA was found consisting of two species, Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA and Denisovan DNA. With further research, researchers hope to date these findings in order to understand the populations and habitations of these cave sites.

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