It’s been about 10 000 years since the Earth last saw its hairiest beast the woolly – mammoth – but if a team of Japanese, Russian and American scientists are successful, a modern day Manny could once again be seen lumbering around . . . and who knows, maybe even helping out his fellow animals.
Researchers led by Prof Akira Iritani, professor emeritus of Kyoto University, hope to clone the animal using tissue obtained from the carcass of a mammoth preserved in a Russian laboratory.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the nuclei of mammoth cells would be inserted into an elephant’s egg cells (its close relative) from which the nuclei have been removed to create an embryo containing mammoth genes.
The embryo would then be planted in an elephant’s womb.
Genetic code shows wooly mammoth was elephant’s close cousin
Frozen mammoth skin and muscle tissue have been collected before from Siberia’s permafrost, but most cell nuclei were damaged by ice crystals. In 2008, however, Japan’s Dr Teruhiko Wakayama figured out how to clone a mouse from cells that had been kept in a deep-freeze for 16 years.
If all goes as planned, a baby mammoth could be born in five or six years. Imagine the papparazi; the little beast would be more popular than Prince William.