U.S. AND KOREA SEARCH FOR WOOLLY MAMMOTH DNA IN ARCTIC, IN RACE TO CLONE EXTINCT BEAST

[Judi Lynn]

BY KRISTIN HUGO ON 10/16/17 AT 5:51 PM

Fans of Pleistocene megafauna, rejoice: There are now two labs on Earth involved in serious attempts to clone the extinct wooly mammoth.

A lab at Harvard Medical School and South Korea’s Sooam Biotech are both attempting to resurrect the mammoth. They are using different approaches to the de-extinction issue—and only one can be first.

De-extinction is the science of bringing extinct animals back from the dead through the process of reproductive cloning. You start with a nucleus that contains the DNA of an extinct animal, put the nucleus in an empty egg from a living relative, and then put the whole thing in the uterus of a living animal. If all goes well, the animal will give birth to a new member of a once-gone species.



A stuffed mammoth excavated from ice in Siberia is exhibited in St Petersburg Museum.
HULTON ARCHIVE / GETTY IMAGES

More:
http://www.newsweek.com/us-korea-search-wooly-mammoth-dna-arctic-race-clone-extinct-beast-686311?piano_t=1