News Russian geneticists suggest breeding mammoths to fight crisis

[jinglesassy]

http://mosnews.com/weird/2009/07/30/breedingmammoths/


What i want to know is where is the russian peta?:lol: but it could be good as long as they dont charge us.

 

[SiberianTiger]

“I wouldn't be surprised to see a living mammoth in the very near future, although a lot depends on the funding, of course,” he said.

Smells like a talented take-in.

 

[Urwumpe]

They should make a small number of mammoths first, then we can talk about funding.

 

[T.Neo]

Fixing our past mistakes? :lol:

Sounds like a great idea, although it must be remembered that mammoths (like elephants) were highly intelligent animals, so farming them may indeed warrant ethical issues.

Mammoths also had low reproductive rates due to being large mammals.

I'd rather see wild or semiwild mammoths instead of domesticated mammoths.

I'm sure obtaining breedable mammoth genetic material could be possible someday, even if it requires some tinkering and combination with living organisms.

 

[Ark]

Yeah, well, they said they were going to deflect an asteroid too, and we all figured out that was BS quickly enough. I'll believe it when I see it.

 

[willy88]

"Mammoth farms in Siberia"

I think that's going to become a phrase that describes stuff like this.

 

[Loru]

I wonder what will be next - sabertooth Tiger or t-rex?

 

[PeterRoss]

Next will be pithecantrope - to hunt mammoths.

 

[T.Neo]

Actually mammoth breeding is far more plausible due to the age of the surviving material- a few tens of thousands of years vs. millions of years for dinosaurs.

As for sabertooth cat (there isn't such a thing as a sabertooth "tiger"- tigers are tigers and sabertooth cats are sabertooth cats), there isn't very well-preserved genetic material around (that I can think of), so mammoths would probably be a better bet.

Mammoths have been preserved almost perfectly in permafrost. I've even heard of accounts of sled dogs being fed thawed-out mammoth flesh... :blink:

 

[computerex]

I'm sure obtaining breedable mammoth genetic material could be possible someday, even if it requires some tinkering and combination with living organisms.

We are half way there, 50% of the woolly mammoth DNA has already been mapped

 

[Urwumpe]

We are half way there, 50% of the woolly mammoth DNA has already been mapped

50% of our DNA is what we have in common with plants...:lol:

 

[Loru]

Ok - "sabertooth tiger" is form widely used in Poland to describe that cats (mostly in popular - sience books). From now on I will use form "sabertooth cat" or Smilodon

If we ever find such cat frozen in glacier or permafrost it will be much easier to make a clone of it.

As for the dinosaurs - I know it is almost impossible to obtain full and intact genetic material. It was rethoricl question with some irony

 

[Andy44]

They should make a small number of mammoths first,

Better idea, how about a number of small mammoths! Bet they'd make good pets.

As for sabertooth cat (there isn't such a thing as a sabertooth "tiger"- tigers are tigers and sabertooth cats are sabertooth cats),

Tiger, I says.

 

[jinglesassy]

They should make a small number of mammoths first, then we can talk about funding.

yeah but if they do it without any funding then why would they need funding to create mammoths when they already created mammoths?

 

[zerofay32]

Better idea, how about a number of small mammoths! Bet they'd make good pets.

MiniMammoth, or I-Mammoth, maybe MyMammoth. I would want one

 

[RisingFury]

Get your iMammoth today!

 

[Quick_Nick]

Get your iMammoth today!

lol I think that name is more appropriate for Apple's latest invention than 'iPad'... (but that's for the other thread :lol

 

[Donamy]

I want a mammoth coat

 

[Eagle]

The Khan offered a reward to any man who could train his donkey to talk. Everyone thought this impossible so no one would take the challenge. Then an old man appeared and claimed he could do it but the training would take 20 years and would need a stipend for costs. The others said to him, "The Khan will kill you when he realizes you can't do this." The old man replied, "Twenty years is a long time, I might die, or the donkey or Khan, before that time is up. And until then I may live comfortably."

 

[cjp]

Where can I get some of whatever this scientist has been using? :lol:

Now, trying to be serious:
how can you ever create a genetically healthy population? Most mammal species need thousands of individuals to make sure that inbreeding doesn't become fatal in the long term.

Even if you use Elephant DNA to fill in the gaps in our knowledge of Mammoth DNA, you end up not only with the genetic defects of the Mammoth 'parents' you used, but also with a whole load of incompatibilities between DNA of the two species. It is like taking source code files from two completely different versions of a piece of software, trying to combine them into a single software build, and expecting it to be bug-free.

I think that for all the patching, more needs to be know about the biochemistry of Elephants AND Mammoths than we currently know about any species (except maybe for some simple bacteria and viruses).