Scientists now believe and are confident that the advanced scientific knowledge today, particularly that of genome sequencing and gene splicing, will make it possible to “genetically resurrect” an extinct species
It is possible that Woolly Mammoths that have been extinct for over 10,000 years may once again walk on the planet in all their massive magnificence.
Scientists now believe and are confident that the advanced scientific knowledge today, particularly that of genome sequencing and gene splicing, will make it possible to “genetically resurrect” an extinct species.
A new company ‘Colossal’ has been recently been set up with precisely this purpose alone. With $15 million funding, the project is headed by a Harvard University Genetics professor George Church. The Professor has already made headlines around the world for his renowned and seminal work in the field of genome sequencing and gene splicing.
Church is hopeful that with their expertise and the generous funding now at their disposal, they would be able to turn the clock back 10,000 years so that “woolly mammoths can walk the Arctic tundra once again”.
He and other researchers also hope that a revived species can play a vital role in combating climate change.
Colossal says: “We are working towards bringing back species who left an ecological void as they went extinct,” As we actively pursue the conservation and preservation of endangered species, we are identifying species that can be given a new set of tools from their extinct relatives to survive in new environments that desperately need them.”
Church is hopeful that with their expertise and the generous funding now at their disposal, they would be able to turn the clock back 10,000 years so that “woolly mammoths can walk the Arctic tundra once again”.
The company intends to use a gene-editing tool, CRISPR-Cas9 to actually create a hybrid specie. Spliced bits of DNA recovered from frozen mammoth specimens would be implanted into the DNA of an Asian elephant, the mammoth’s closest living relative.
This would presumably result in the Asian elephant giving birth to a hybrid. The resulting animal — known as a “mammophant” — would look, and presumably behave, much like a woolly mammoth.
Mammoths once played a vital role in maintaining the Earth’s ecological balance and harmony. In their time, the massive animals would scrape away top layers of artic ice, so that cold air could reach the soil and preserve the permafrost, a thick subsurface layer of soil that remains below freezing point throughout the year, occurring chiefly in polar regions.
With the mammoths gone, the permafrost began to gradually get warmer and warmer, releasing greenhouses gases into the atmosphere.
Prof Church and his colleagues believe that by reintroducing the woolly mammoths – more than 10 feet in height at the shoulder and weighed as much as 15 tonnes – this ‘ecological aberration’ could be restored.
“With the reintroduction of the woolly mammoth … we believe our work will restore this degraded ecosystem to a richer one, similar to the tundra that existed as recently as 10,000 years ago,” the company says.
However, despite Prof Church’s upbeat hype and confidence in his theories, there is still a lot of skepticism to his project.
Joseph Frederickson, a vertebrate paleontologist and director of the Weis Earth Science Museum in Menasha, Wisconsin, USA, thinks people should use their advanced knowledge to save animals from extinction rather than resurrect extinct creatures.
“If you can create a mammoth or at least an elephant that looks like a good copy of a mammoth that could survive in Siberia, you could do quite a bit for the white rhino or the giant panda,” he says.
Another scientist Beth Shapiro, paleogeneticist at the University of California, Santa Cruz and author of How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of De-Extinction, says It’s never going to be possible to create a species that is 100% identical. But what if we could use this technology not to bring back mammoths but to save elephants?”
Stockholm-based Centre for Palaeogenetics Evolutionary Genetics Professor Love Dalén says “I personally do not think that this will have any measurable impact, on the rate of climate change in the future, even if it were to succeed,”
In another sense, there’s the question of how mammoths might fit in. Matthew Cobb, zoology professor at the University of Manchester, says”What will happen when the elephant-mammoth hybrid is born? How will it be greeted by elephants?”
So it is clear then that the ‘de-extinction’ of mammoths does raise many ethical issues. Most importantly, whether men should play God and tamper with creation, past or present?
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