Dolly the sheep is the world famous cloned animal that subjected scientists to a lot of scrutiny over research ethics, but it has not stopped modern science from attempting to clone another animal, a mammoth.
This time, things are a bit more complex for researchers. First there is the obvious, the mammoth species went extinct an estimated 4,000 years ago. Second, how will scientists accomplish such a feat?
Ian Wilmut, the Edinburgh-based stem-cell scientist, whose team unveiled Dolly as the world's first cloned mammal in 1996, told The Conversation it's possible.
"It is unlikely that a mammoth could be cloned in the way we created Dolly the sheep, as has been proposed following the discovery of mammoth bones in northern Siberia," academic journalism website, The Conversation, reports. "However, the idea prompts us to consider the feasibility of other avenues. Even if the Dolly method is not possible, there are other ways in which it would be biologically interesting to work with viable mammoth cells if they can be found."
If scientists want to successfully create a Dolly-like clone, females of a closely related species must provide unfertilized eggs. If the lab can successfully produce the cloned embryos, the same species must carry the pregnancies.
According to The Conversation, cloning depends on having two cells, including "an egg recovered from an animal around the time when usually she would be mated." In order to optimize the success of the procedure, several hundred or even several thousand eggs are needed for cloning techniques.
"The cloning procedure is very inefficient. After all, after several years of research with sheep eggs, Dolly was the only one to develop from 277 cloned embryos," the Conversation reports. "In species in which research has continued, the typical success rate is still only around 5% at best."
Of course, cells from mammoths are required for their genetic information to control development.
According to The Conversation, the cells can be recovered in the bone marrow found in frozen north of Siberia. However, the cells will degenerate as the temperatures drop, and become useless when the bones are thawed.
To put it simply, there are many complications when it comes to cloning techniques and scientists are well aware of the issues.
Read The Conversation's full mammoth story, which Ian Wilmut wrote, here.
