Post by Supersaurus on Nov 5, 2008 15:10:29 GMT -5
Check out this article on news of cloning 50 mice from 15 year old frozen cells! ;D
Cloning technique raises woolly mammoth possibility
CHRIS DOLMETSCH; Bloomberg News Published: November 5th, 2008 12:30 AM
The woolly mammoth, extinct for thousands of years, may be closer to a comeback.
A technique that has been used to clone mice and other animals could enable scientists to resurrect long-gone, frozen species such as woolly mammoths, according to a study that appeared in Tuesday’s issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Japanese researchers led by Sayaka Wakayama of the Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe made clones with a technique known as nuclear transfer, using the nuclei of cells from the brains of mice that had been frozen at -20 degrees Celsius for as much as 16 years.
The method, similar to the technique used in 1996 to create Dolly the sheep, the world’s first cloned animal, involves swapping genetic material from one individual into an egg cell belonging to another.
“It’s not the first time that dead animals have been resurrected,” said George E. Seidel Jr. of Colorado State University in Fort Collins, editor of the study. “But previously they were stored much colder than these temperatures and they were generally treated in a special way.”
The woolly mammoth, which stood as tall as 11 feet at the shoulder and weighed as much as 6 tons, originated in Eurasia about 250,000 years ago. Most disappeared near the end of the Pleistocene era that ended about 10,000 B.C., according to the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Other scientists have suggested that it’s impossible to clone extinct species such as woolly mammoths from their frozen remains. No live cells from the animals are available, and any remaining genetic material is likely to have degraded, according to the study.
Yet the creation of live animals from material taken from a mouse frozen for more than a decade and a half suggests that scientists may be able to use nuclear transfer techniques to clone extinct species or maintain stocks of genetic information without special preservation methods, the study says.
Reproduction of a woolly mammoth from remains frozen in ice isn’t expected to happen within the next decade, as the cells are likely to die once they are thawed out and there are no live eggs, Seidel said an elephant egg might be capable of hosting a woolly mammoth clone.
“It’s a long shot, but it’s evidence along the lines that that might be possible,” Seidel said in a telephone interview.
Cloning technique raises woolly mammoth possibility
CHRIS DOLMETSCH; Bloomberg News Published: November 5th, 2008 12:30 AM
The woolly mammoth, extinct for thousands of years, may be closer to a comeback.
A technique that has been used to clone mice and other animals could enable scientists to resurrect long-gone, frozen species such as woolly mammoths, according to a study that appeared in Tuesday’s issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Japanese researchers led by Sayaka Wakayama of the Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe made clones with a technique known as nuclear transfer, using the nuclei of cells from the brains of mice that had been frozen at -20 degrees Celsius for as much as 16 years.
The method, similar to the technique used in 1996 to create Dolly the sheep, the world’s first cloned animal, involves swapping genetic material from one individual into an egg cell belonging to another.
“It’s not the first time that dead animals have been resurrected,” said George E. Seidel Jr. of Colorado State University in Fort Collins, editor of the study. “But previously they were stored much colder than these temperatures and they were generally treated in a special way.”
The woolly mammoth, which stood as tall as 11 feet at the shoulder and weighed as much as 6 tons, originated in Eurasia about 250,000 years ago. Most disappeared near the end of the Pleistocene era that ended about 10,000 B.C., according to the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Other scientists have suggested that it’s impossible to clone extinct species such as woolly mammoths from their frozen remains. No live cells from the animals are available, and any remaining genetic material is likely to have degraded, according to the study.
Yet the creation of live animals from material taken from a mouse frozen for more than a decade and a half suggests that scientists may be able to use nuclear transfer techniques to clone extinct species or maintain stocks of genetic information without special preservation methods, the study says.
Reproduction of a woolly mammoth from remains frozen in ice isn’t expected to happen within the next decade, as the cells are likely to die once they are thawed out and there are no live eggs, Seidel said an elephant egg might be capable of hosting a woolly mammoth clone.
“It’s a long shot, but it’s evidence along the lines that that might be possible,” Seidel said in a telephone interview.