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Forum: Internet Links Topic: Japan = God? started by: Leisher Posted by Leisher on Jan. 18 2011,07:06
< Japanese scientists will use cloning to bring a mammoth back to life with 5 years. >Have they never seen Godzilla or Jurassic Park? Someone needs to rent those for these guys immediately. Seriously, what Japanese guy thought to himself: "This country needs more giant prehistoric animals walking around"? No word yet on how global warming is affecting this news story... Posted by GORDON on Jan. 18 2011,07:13
It will get interesting when someone decides we need to put some herds back in Canada.
Posted by Malcolm on Jan. 18 2011,08:26
It looks like they're trying to get DNA from frozen cells. And it furthermore looks like they longest sprint they've gone is 16 years from some frozen mice cells under probably good conditions. It then says they "developed techniques" to get the mammoth DNA based on that.So they miraculously get the DNA ... which miraculously is accepted by the elephant cells ... which miraculously is carried to term with no medical issues whatsoever ... and miraculously produces a healthy, viable mammoth. I can only imagine the details of the problems involved in each step of this process, but just from those sentences above, they've got a loooooooooooooooong way to go and about a trillion things that could go wrong and fuck their efforts. Posted by Troy on Jan. 18 2011,10:04
My guess is that a TON of the genetic material will probably need to be replaced with existing elephant genetics to produce a live offspring. If it were to actually live, it would just looks like an elephant.
Posted by TPRJones on Jan. 18 2011,13:12
I would imagine the DNA sequences for mammoths and elephants are probably already very similar. Consider that were over 98% genetically similar to chimps as an example. I imagine the similarities here are even higher. The key will be identifying and cloning that 1% that makes the difference, and getting it to play nice with whatever they have to scavenge from elephant DNA.Most likely outcome is failure. In the event of some sort of success, I agree with Troy; odds are 99 out of 100 that it'll just be your basic elephant. |