A group of researchers are getting closer to bringing the extinct woolly mammoth back to life. Geneticist George Churchโs lab at Harvard University successfully copied genes from frozen woolly mammoths and pasted them into the genome of an Asian elephant.
Using a DNA editing tool called CRISPR, the scientists spliced genes for the mammothsโ small ears, subcutaneous fat, and hair length and color into the DNA of elephant skin cells. The tissue cultures represent the first time woolly mammoth genes have been functional since the species went extinct around 4,000 years ago.
The research has not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal โbecause there is more work to do,โ Church told the U.K.โs Sunday Times, โbut we plan to do so.โ
The work is part of an effort to bring extinct species back from the dead, a process called โde-extinctionโ. The recent breakthrough shows that one proposed de-extinction method–which involves splicing genes from extinct animals into the genomes of their living relativesโjust might work. But don’t believe the headlines suggesting woolly mammoth cloning is just around the corner. Church explained to Popular Science that thereโs a lot more research to be done.
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โJust making a DNA change isnโt that meaningful,โ says Church. โWe want to read out the phenotypes.โ
To do that, the team needs to figure out how to take the flat hybrid cells from a petri dish and coax them into becoming specialized tissuesโsuch as blood cells or liver organoids–then test to see if they behave properly. For example, do the mammoth hair genes lead to hair that’s the right color, length, and woolliness?
Read full, original article: Woolly mammoth DNA successfully spliced into elephant cells
