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Austin Paine | Contributing Writer | October 3rd, 2019
Dr. George Church leads a Harvard based team in the quest to resurrect one of history's most famous extinct species, the woolly mammoth. Although they haven't brought one back yet, they are much closer than most would expect.
Church is a leading figure and pioneer in the field of genetic technology. He was one of the scientists who helped develop CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), a gene modifying technology that allows scientists to target specific stretches of genetic code and precisely edit the DNA. Church has been working on the mammoth project for about 11 years with Stewart Brand, a scientist interested in using genetic technology to help conservation efforts. Although slow in its first years, the project picked up with the breakthroughs in genetic technology such as the development of CRISPR.
The current plan is to modify the genome of the asian elephant to make it more similar to that of real mammoth DNA samples extracted from preserved specimens. The Asian Elephant already shares 99.96% of its DNA with its mammoth cousin, making it relatively easy, using CRISPR, to edit traits into the elephant’s DNA that the mammoths used to survive in their northern habitat.
At the moment, Church's team is working on inserting into the asian elephant genome the genes in the mammoth genome that code for three adaptations essential to a mammoth’s survival in their cold environment: Blood oxygen release at low temperatures, thick hair, and subcutaneous fat. To do this, they are essentially copying and pasting these genes from the mammoth DNA into living elephant cell cultures using CRISPR. Several of the genes that allow for these adaptation have already been successfully rewritten into the elephant cells, bringing us closer and closer to a functioning mammoth genome.
Can the Woolly Mammoth Return? - Photo by History.com
The next step will be to reprogram these elephant cells into stem cells. These cells can be developed into many different types of tissues to ensure that the mammoth modification produces the desired trait. For example, they can grow the stem cells into hair to test if the gene they edited into the elephant genome actually produces the type of hair needed for the mammoth to survive in freezing weather. They can do this type of editing for various adaptations to ensure that they all work the way they need to work. More importantly, this method allows them to test the necessary traits without having to develop an entire mammoth.
Once the scientists find the mammoth traits to be sufficient for their survival, they can start experiments to generate embryos. Church plans to develop the embryos artificially via a uterus that would be constructed in the lab. This plan has recently shown some potential with the birth of mouse pups using a similar method. Doing it this way would also eliminate the need to use asian elephants as surrogate mothers, which was the original plan.
After mammoths have successfully been born they will first be integrated into asian elephant herds at zoos in the US, Canada and Europe. Here they will get the social imprinting needed in early stages of development. Once a large enough population is established in captivity scientists will begin releasing herds of mammoths at reservation sites throughout the arctic. One of the premier sites for the development of these mammoth herds will be Pleistocene Park in northeastern Siberia. This is the area of the world that the mammoth originally inhabited. Many of the surviving species that originally lived in the area have already been relocated back in anticipation of the mammoths return. Scientists hope that with the reinstallment of the mammoth the ecosystem can be changed back from its current state of desolate tundra to the chilly grasslands of 10,000 years ago.
The project to bring back the mammoth is the crown jewel of many similar conservation projects to revive and restore disappearing and disappeared species back to their former glory. However, cloning animals is just a fraction of the potential that has been acquired in the development of more sophisticated biotechnology. The ability to edit a living being’s DNA will go on to solve many of the worlds biggest problems and in turn create many more problems in its wake. Bioengineering and biotechnology are truly the new frontier of human civilization.
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