The Resurrection of the Woolly Mammoth

As mentioned earlier Dolly is the most famous of the cloned organisms, but there were many before and after her. In 1952 a tadpole was cloned, the first clone ever. (Human Genome Project) Dolly was the first mammal ever cloned. After Dolly other animals such as sheep, goats, cows, mice, pigs, cats, rabbits, and a guar have been cloned. Some animals are more resistant to the procedure used for cloning. The process used is called somatic cell nuclear transfer. This process is used to create an animal that has the same nuclear DNA as another animal. They are not identical in the strictest sense the mitochondria and mitochondrial DNA comes from the egg. The “acquired mutations found in the mitochondrial DNA are believed to play an important role in the aging process.”(Human Genome Project) The process starts by removing all the genetic information from an unfertilized egg with an extremely small needle. Then an adult cell is taken from the donor. The genetic material is removed from the cell and implanted in the now empty embryo. Then the cell is treated with chemicals or an electric current to cause it to start to divide. Once it reaches a certain size it is implanted into a host uterus where it

There were many different species of the Mammoth. Examples include Mammuthus meridonalis (Southern Mammoth), Mammuthus primigenius (Woolly Mammoth), etc. (Brooks, 2008). Mammoths are best described as bigger, modern-day elephants covered in a thick coat of fur and are symbolic of the ice age. This is due to their large size, their vast population of the North and South Pole, and their ability to adapt to extremely cold temperatures (Douglas, 2013). Some ways these mammals managed to survive in their environments were that their coats consisted of long, dark guard hairs and fine under wool allowing them to stay warm; the thick insulating layer of fat that was found underneath their coats and that their cheek teeth were large and made up of compressed enamel plates that were great for grinding up the tough dry grasses that they fed on. It is estimated that the earliest an elephant-like animal lived was 58 million years ago. Mammoths first lived in Europe and Asia about 2.5 million years ago and entered North America about 1.7 to 1.2 million years ago (Brooks, 2008). The last living Mammoth is approximated to be as recent as 3700 years ago. However, due to the rapidly changing environment and the increased human predation of these species, there was a significant drop off in the population of Mammoths 11,000 years ago (Douglas, 2013). Research on some of the social aspects of Mammoths showed that they often travelled in herds, where the adult Mammoths were very protective of

The first idea of cloning began in 1938, when scientist Hans Spemann had the idea to replace the nucleus of an egg with the nucleus of another cell. Mr. Spemann did this in an attempt to grow a new embryo; however, the experiment was unsuccessful (Copernicus Science Centre). A successful attempt in the field of cloning did not occur until the 1970’s when Scientist John B. Gurdon successfully cloned a frog. However, each clone did not survive passed the stage of a tadpole. Scientist Gurdon was questioned by the public as to whether or not his practices were morally and ethically correct, especially since he was unable to successfully clone a mammal. (Copernicus Science Centre). The cloning of a mammal was not successful until 1997 when the

When cloning, it’s kind of like a surgery. A cell of the original animal is taken out and placed into another one. This causes the new “parent” to have stress and give birth to a clone of the original animal. 1 out of 250 chances will be successful. Many will fail.

The mammoth of Dendermonde has a particular story. In the Sixties, major construction works took place in an aera nearby called the Onolfpolder. During the late Ice Age, swollen rivers deposed a mass of organic materials in that area, like the skeletons of woolly mammoths, and bones from the equally woolly rhinoceros. Up to three tones of bones were shipped off to Brussels for furter examination.

Some of the challenges in cloning a mammal organism are that since this is not natural a scientist needs to reprogram the nucleus (nuclear reprogramming) when the transfer is complete in order for the nucleus to develop as if it was a natural embryo. This is difficult because in a normal embryo it has DNA that will express certain genes leading to cell determination which is when a cell becomes a particular type of cell and that can be done in a normal embryo. However, when the embryo begins to develop the cells will start to go through cell differentiation as each cell will now have a highly specialized cell type. The program is now changed. Scientists need to clone and be aware of all the changes that can happen as cells go through cell determination and cell differentiation. If done incorrectly the cloned embryo will not develop or develop irregularly.

The process is most widely used today and consists of two similar methods. One, an egg cell is taken from an animal and the nucleus is extracted with a small needle. Next, the animal desired for cloning has a somatic cell (anything other than a sex cell; like liver or skin cell) taken, extracting the nucleus, and is then fused with the empty egg cell. Instead of extracting the nucleus from the somatic cell, biologists could also use an electrical current to fuse the entire somatic cell with the empty egg cell. Both processes allow for early-stage development in a test

Although the science is not perfect, scientists have already tried to bring an extinct goat back to existence. In 2009, a wild mountain goat, called a burcardo, was created using goats as egg donors, but the clones died soon after birth ((((Why Clone Article citation).

The first successful mammal was cloned in the form of Dolly the sheep in 1996. She was cloned at the Roslin Institute in Midlothian, Scotland, and lived there until her death when she was six years old. Animal cloning refers to the production of genetically identical whole organisms, or ‘clones’. This is carried out with the use of somatic cell nuclear transfer. Cloning is designed to quickly and efficiently to produce many identical copies of an organism (generally with desired traits). Somatic cell nuclear transfer is the process of transferring a nucleus from a donor cell to an enucleated egg (an egg that has had the nucleus removed). An pulse of electricity fuses the nucleus and enucleated egg together and the resultant egg is then left to divide artificially for about 5 days (known as a blastocyst). The blastocyst will then be transferred into a surrogate mother that will give birth to the offspring. This offspring will have the identical DNA to the organism the somatic cell (nucleus) came from unless a mutation occurs, which will cause a slight change in the DNA coding sequence. However, the offspring will carry the mitochondria from the donor egg cell rather than the somatic cell which can unfortunately lead to nuclear-mitochondrial incompatibilities that can lead to death. Dolly the sheep was the first mammal to be successfully cloned from a somatic cell. Following Dolly’s death at the

The process of cloning is a timely and delicate process that has many pros and cons. When a scientist clones an organism, it is as if he is taking life into his own hands and

Cloning animals have already been a development, but each clone has had development problems. Most have a problem such as later development. Reproductive cloning is expensive and highly inefficient. “More than 90% of cloning attempts fail to produce viable offspring.”(“Cloning: an Issue Overview”p.2) More than 100 nuclear transfer procedures could be required to produce one viable clone. In addition to low success rates, cloned animals tend to have more compromised immune function and higher rates of infection, tumor growth, and other disorders. Cloned animals that do survive tend to be much bigger at birth than their natural counterparts. “Cloned animals also experience many health complications, such as abnormally large organs, and so they often die early. For example, scientists euthanized Dolly when she was six years old (half her expected lifetime) because she suffered from progressive lung disease and severe arthritis”(Joseph Castro, p.1).Dolly is a the first mammal ever cloned in history, with her shocking survival when she was born,

Technology is the sole reason cloning is even possible, but it is not enough to save endangered species on its own. Due to technology, extinct species may even possible be brought back into existence. A closely related species, currently living, that could serve as a surrogate mother and a well-preserved source of DNA from the extinct

What is Animal Cloning? It is defined as a cell, group of cells, or an organism that is produced asexually from and is identical to a single ancestor. Cloning is also known as the nuclear cloning methodology using the nuclear transfer in early 1950’s. Animal Cloning was first tried in amphibians. The main problem in animal cloning up to this time is the efficiency of the process, how effective it is for us. The recent effectiveness of Nuclear Transfer is underprivileged. The result of nuclear transfer

Cloning occurs organically in nature. An embryo divides into two individuals with identical DNA thus producing twins. This of course is occurring naturally without any special help or intervention from humans. However in this day and age, scientists have taken it upon themselves to try their hand at cloning mammals with an increasing possibility of human cloning on just on the horizon.

Animal cloning is a process by which a complete organism is replicated from a single cell extracted from the parent organism and in a manner in which they are genetically the same (Cloning, 2017). Meaning, that the cloned animal is an exact copy of its parent; both contain the identical DNA (Cloning, 2017). More specifically, in reproductive cloning, “researchers remove a mature somatic cell, such as a skin cell, from