From the NT News newspaper Darwin few days ago
Standby for Woolly mammoth burger
:
Standby for Woolly mammoth burger
:
Bring back the woolly mammoth, well close enough
- Thread starter Michael 345
- Start date
sculptor
Valued Senior Member
"It's de-extinction efforts has the potential to...halt the effects of climate change..."From the NT News newspaper Darwin few days ago
View attachment 4417
Standby for Woolly mammoth burger
:
Anyone wanna compliment the emperor on his new cloths?
Ya thought that brain fart filtered through dark rose coloured glasses and Mt Everest high optimism was a bit much
I think it would be really interesting to see a 'sort of' wooly mammoth. The climate change stuff was rather stupid, hopefully there genetics expertise is on a higher level.
foghorn
Valued Senior Member
Hold on... Is there methane in a mammoth fart?
https://elephantconservation.org/elephants/just-for-kids/
https://elephantconservation.org/elephants/just-for-kids/
https://www.britannica.com/science/greenhouse-gas/Methane
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sculptor
Valued Senior Member
Some folks use the word mammoth to mean huge....
and
Imagine a thundering tremolo mammoth fart...lasting 10 minutes...
(phorb pharts?)
foghorn
Valued Senior Member
https://elephantconservation.org/elephants/just-for-kids/
Why would someone want to spend the whole day stuck in a car with a farting elephant just to travel 20 miles???
sculptor
Valued Senior Member
anecdote:
When sculpting
Isis rising from her dream of Osiris with the conception of Horus:
I was trying to craft bulls' horns into Isis hair/Osiris' face (Osiris' spirit was said to animate the apis bull)
I could not make it work to my satisfaction.........try and try and try and try again.....
One evening, I glanced up where I had a picture of a mammoth hanging on my studio wall
with the tusks shaped something like this:
and
so
I rounded off Osiris face with mammoth-like tusks
and
I was satisfied(almost)
When sculpting
Isis rising from her dream of Osiris with the conception of Horus:
I was trying to craft bulls' horns into Isis hair/Osiris' face (Osiris' spirit was said to animate the apis bull)
I could not make it work to my satisfaction.........try and try and try and try again.....
One evening, I glanced up where I had a picture of a mammoth hanging on my studio wall
with the tusks shaped something like this:
and
so
I rounded off Osiris face with mammoth-like tusks
and
I was satisfied(almost)
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I just don’t get this whole woolly mammoth thing. 
The idea regularly pops up with various people and companies (both private and public/academic) claiming they’re definitely going to do it. But in every instance, the scientific specifics are not addressed. Every instance to date has simply been either a pure publicity stunt (with no intention to actually follow through) or hubris that they can overcome the significant technical obstacles (and then we never hear from them again after they predictably fail). I wonder which one it is this time.
First, there’s the ‘why’ question. No rationale I’ve yet seen has convinced me that it’s worthwhile. The whole ‘restoring the ecosystem’ angle is ridiculous.
But aside from that, there are the practical issues. How is this going to be done? I cannot imagine that a new mammoth can be cloned from cells taken from mammoth remains (ie. the somatic cell nuclear transfer technique that has been used to clone a variety of extant animals). The genomic damage will simply be too great. Yes, scientists have managed to clone a dead rat that was frozen in a lab freezer (-20oC) for a dozen years or so. But that’s not thousands of years ago in the open environment like the mammoth. Even if they can generate a cloned embryo via SCNT, the technique relies on implantation and gestation in a surrogate mother. There’s no indication that extant elephants can gestate a mammoth embryo.
So, what this leaves is the idea of extracting mammoth DNA from remains and isolating a few individual genes. Isolating a few mammoth genes may be possible, as opposed to having an intact entire mammoth genome which is highly unlikely. Then, it might be possible to take elephant cells and swap in a few mammoth genes to replace to elephant genes, then clone from the modified cells (which is much more likely as it’s an extant species). Of course, what you end up with is an elephant with a few mammoth genes, not a woolly mammoth. Calling it a "hybrid" is absurd. It will be 99.99% elephant.
The idea regularly pops up with various people and companies (both private and public/academic) claiming they’re definitely going to do it. But in every instance, the scientific specifics are not addressed. Every instance to date has simply been either a pure publicity stunt (with no intention to actually follow through) or hubris that they can overcome the significant technical obstacles (and then we never hear from them again after they predictably fail). I wonder which one it is this time.First, there’s the ‘why’ question. No rationale I’ve yet seen has convinced me that it’s worthwhile. The whole ‘restoring the ecosystem’ angle is ridiculous.
But aside from that, there are the practical issues. How is this going to be done? I cannot imagine that a new mammoth can be cloned from cells taken from mammoth remains (ie. the somatic cell nuclear transfer technique that has been used to clone a variety of extant animals). The genomic damage will simply be too great. Yes, scientists have managed to clone a dead rat that was frozen in a lab freezer (-20oC) for a dozen years or so. But that’s not thousands of years ago in the open environment like the mammoth. Even if they can generate a cloned embryo via SCNT, the technique relies on implantation and gestation in a surrogate mother. There’s no indication that extant elephants can gestate a mammoth embryo.
So, what this leaves is the idea of extracting mammoth DNA from remains and isolating a few individual genes. Isolating a few mammoth genes may be possible, as opposed to having an intact entire mammoth genome which is highly unlikely. Then, it might be possible to take elephant cells and swap in a few mammoth genes to replace to elephant genes, then clone from the modified cells (which is much more likely as it’s an extant species). Of course, what you end up with is an elephant with a few mammoth genes, not a woolly mammoth. Calling it a "hybrid" is absurd. It will be 99.99% elephant.
It will be 99.99% elephant. OK not a problem. Consider it to be a training try out
At least some woolly DNA is being kept ready for another try as techniques improve