Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves by George McDonald Church & Ed Regis

Author:George McDonald Church & Ed Regis
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Genetics & Genomics, Biology, Nature, Biochemistry, Science, Life Sciences, General, Biotechnology
ISBN: 9780465033294
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2012-09-15T07:24:59+00:00

That depends on the species and what there is left of it. For species whose intact cells, tissues, or other genetic materials have been preserved—as in the case of the bucardo, for example, or species well represented in frozen zoos, labs, or other storage facilities—revival will be possible through straightforward interspecies nuclear transfer cloning.

A second category consists of species whose genetic material might or might not be too corrupt for cloning. This is true of the woolly mammoth, for example. Although mammoth specimens buried in permafrost may look remarkably lifelike, their DNA is not in the same condition. The woolly mammoth, however, really falls into a class by itself.

Unlike the Neanderthals, whose remains consist exclusively of teeth, skulls, and other bones, Siberian mammoth carcasses have turned up with hair and even soft tissue on them. In August 1799 a Russian hunter looking for mammoth tusks came across an oddly shaped block of ice on the shoreline of the Laptev Sea in north-central Siberia. The summer sun had melted some of the ice, exposing two projections that later turned out to be tusks.

Two years later, the hunter returned to the area during the summertime and found that one side of the animal had been exposed to view, while the rest of the body was still frozen. It was not until 1806 that Michael Adams, of the Imperial Academy of Science at St. Petersburg, reached the site. By this point, nearby villagers had hacked off some of the flesh and fed it to their dogs. Bears, wolves, and foxes had eaten the rest, leaving only a skeleton. Now known as the Adams mammoth, the skeleton is on display in the St. Petersburg Zoological Museum.

More recently, the Jarkov mammoth was discovered in 1997 by a family of that name who came across a tusk protruding from the frozen ground of the Taymyr peninsula in northernmost Siberia. A group of latter-day mammoth hunters arrived at the scene and speculated that an intact mammoth carcass could be lodged in the ice—an entire mammoth! In October 1999, a helicopter lifted a twenty-three-ton ice block with tusks protruding bizarrely from it up and out of the frozen tundra, and hauled it to an ice cave. There, as recorded by a Discovery Channel film crew, scientists began defrosting the remains with hair dryers.

The Jarkov mammoth turned out to be mostly bones, but even so, a bit of soft tissue remained. It looked like a strip of beef jerky.

Coincidentally, a second defrosting mammoth (the Hook mammoth) happened to be located nearby, and some of the expedition’s researchers traveled to the site. One of them, Alexi Tikhonov, cut off a piece of what appeared to be mammoth muscle. Jokingly, he offered it to those present all of whom refused this morsel. And so, braced by a few shots of vodka, he took a bite himself. “It was awful,” he said. “It tasted like meat left too long in the freezer.” (Mammoth meat is so common in Siberia that fox trappers use it as bait.

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