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Most of Woolly Mammoth Genome Reconstructed
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu Nov 20, 2008 07:57 AM
from the I-want-a-cave-bear dept.
from the I-want-a-cave-bear dept.
geekmansworld writes "From the Washington Post, 'An international team of scientists has reconstructed more than three-quarters of the genome of the woolly mammoth using DNA extracted from balls of hair, the first time this has been accomplished for an extinct species.' Who wants a pet mammoth?"
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Resurrecting the Mighty Mammoth, Cheaply 322 comments
somanyrobots writes with an interesting followup in the New York Times to the earlier-reported substantial reconstruction of the woolly mammoth genome: "Scientists are talking for the first time about the old idea of resurrecting extinct species as if this staple of science fiction is a realistic possibility, saying that a living mammoth could perhaps be regenerated for as little as $10 million. The same technology could be applied to any other extinct species from which one can obtain hair, horn, hooves, fur or feathers, and which went extinct within the last 60,000 years, the effective age limit for DNA." (The Washington Post article linked from the earlier post was much more skeptical, calling such an attempt "still firmly the domain of science fiction." The New York Times article, while describing the process in similar terms, also calls attention to recent advances in sequencing DNA, as well as recoding DNA for cloning.)
[+]
Should We Clone a Neanderthal? 990 comments
SpaceAdmiral writes "Forget cloning a woolly mammoth — should scientists clone a Neanderthal? Such a feat should be possible soon, although it raises a number of bioethics concerns, including where to draw the line between humans and other animals."
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Just to get it over with quickly (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
In Soviet Russia, woolly mammoths reconstruct you!!!
Not quite there yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that they have yet to work out how many chromosomes the woolly mammoth had, or which of the DNA features are genuine mutations, and which are artefacts caused by damage since the death of the creatures from whom DNA was extracted, there's a fair distance to go yet.
Still, I don't doubt this is a seriously fun project to be working on. I'd love to get involved.
Re:Not quite there yet (Score:5, Funny)
Just download god's genome checker.
[x] Automatically fix chromosome errors
[x] Scan for and attempt to recover bad base pairs
Parent
Re:Not quite there yet (Score:5, Funny)
Your post advocates a
(x) technical ( ) religious ( ) time travel
approach to resurrecting extinct species. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws.)
( ) Possibility of creating mutant monsters
( ) We are defenceless against brute force attacks
(x) People will not put up with giant stampy animals roaming about
(x) The police will not put up with giant stampy animals roaming about
( ) Requires too much cooperation from organised religion
(x) Requires immediate total cooperation from government regulators
( ) Time travel isn't possible
( ) Time travel into the past isn't possible without a wormhole which was (is) in the past already
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
(x) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(x) Lack of centrally controlling authority for mad scientists
(x) We haven't even sequenced the whole genome
(x) Being sued by Michael Crichton's estate
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird old animals
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird old animals
( ) Huge existing animals occupying the evolutionary niche of the old ones
(x) Susceptibility of DNA to damage
(x) We don't even know how many chromosomes it should have
( ) Unavailability of any living relatives to carry the foetus to term
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
(x) Religions will argue about playing god
(x) Pointlessness of an animal adapted for an ice age during a period of global warming
( ) What's dead should stay dead
(x) There are better things to spend the money on
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Shouldn't something along the line of "we don't know whether they taste nice" be in there?
There have been some reports of Russians eating frozen Mammoth, but I'm not sure how true that is (I read it somewhere, but I can't remember where).
Here are some quick links I found on the topic:
link 1 [straightdope.com]
link 2 [stupidquestion.net]
Not to mention... (Score:4, Informative)
Not to mention, didn't we also have this story about how the proteins affect the transcription too, and the same piece of DNA can be transcribed in a dozen different ways or not at all, depending on how those proteins regulate it? It seems to me like in that case it's like saying they decoded half of it.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not to mention... (Score:5, Informative)
The folks at 454 Life Sciences made reconstructing a genome from lots of little pieces pretty simple by using an algorithm that looks for common fragments (ex AAGGCTTCTA and CTTCTATCTGG probably go together to form AAGGCTTCTATCTGG).
They also pretty much pioneered modern sequencing techniques.
The news here (IMHO) is that we've been able to read the genome of an extinct animal. That is an impressive achievement, a few BP errors notwithstanding. If we have multiple copies of the genome (multiple cells), we should be able to figure out what the correct sequence is (mutations are random, and no two cells will have the same mutations). Hair is not exactly the prime target for sequencing due to its exposure to UV light (UV light wreaks havoc on DNA), but with a little work we should be able to the actual sequence.
So at the end of the day, the Nobel prize goes to the guy who can figure out how many chromosomes a mammoth had. I'd like to say "just use the number that elephants have" but 7 million years (last common ancester) is easily enough time for chromosome duplication to occur.
Parent
Re:Not to mention... (Score:5, Informative)
The folks at 454 Life Sciences made reconstructing a genome from lots of little pieces pretty simple by using an algorithm that looks for common fragments (ex AAGGCTTCTA and CTTCTATCTGG probably go together to form AAGGCTTCTATCTGG).
Spoken like one who has never actually tried to assemble a genome sequence. Trust me, there is absolutely nothing simple about it. And while 454 Life Sciences (now a division of Roche Diagnostics) pioneered a new technology for generating raw DNA sequence data they did not pioneer the assembly process. Sequence assembly algorithms are a long and well studied problem.
They also pretty much pioneered modern sequencing techniques.
While 454 was first to the market with a next-generation sequencing platform they are currently in heavy competition with the Illumina/Solexa platform. And then there is Pacific Bioscience due to release a platform in 2010 which could eat both their lunches.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Well, kmcarr, I bow before your expertise. I've never sequenced a genome, let alone the type of massively parallel sequencing you've done (you're the guy that worked on Arabidopsis sequencing, right?)
In my defense, however, I only said that 454 had made life a lot easier for people doing sequencing, not that the algorithm itself was simple. I also note that you yourself used their pyrophosphate technique - to say that it's anything but a huge technological leap forward is to undercredit it. I repeat, 454
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
You're thinking of Valley of the Cloneasaurus.
Re:Not quite there yet (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Not quite there yet (Score:5, Informative)
The mammoth mitochondrial genome was decoded a few years ago.
Mito DNA is much easier to sequence from old samples due to the fact that for every cell which contains one copy of the nuclear genome, there are thousands of copies of the mitochondrial genome.
Parent
apparently... (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
the numbers of woolly mammoths has tripled in the past six months...
They're breeding.....nature finds a way.
Ummm....where's that helicoptor.
When did they die out? (Score:3, Interesting)
As a kid I always thought that Wooly Mammoths died out aroud the same time as the dinosaurs but I heard a while back that they might have been around until a couple of thousand years ago. I now know that man hunted them to the dinosaur date is wrong but when did the last one shed it's mortal coil?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
My understanding is that the woolly mammoth is one of the first casualty of the infestation Earth by the human species : they went extinct partly because of the warming climate, partly because of overhunting.
Re: (Score:2)
Good thing they are thinking about bringing back Neaderthal man, too....
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/nation/11/20/1120mammoth.html [statesman.com]
Basically the same article but with additional content about Neaderthal DNA, too.
Layne
Re: (Score:2)
They surely must have had genetics to survive warm-ages? If not they must have been a short-lived species.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Genetics, no. Gillettes, yes.
Sadly, things were a bit primitive back then. Instead of the 97 steel blades we have now there was only one - and made of flint at that. By the time the poor creatures had even one leg shaved, they'd died of heat exhaustion.
And that, children, is why mammoths are extinct.
Re:When did they die out? (Score:4, Informative)
They were quite recent: They survived on Wrangle Island (Artic) and St Paul Island (Bearing Sea) as dwarfs until 1700 BCE.
They were also found on the Channel Islands off California and disappeared around 40,000 BCE. They are still digging them up, preserved, in the permafrost of Siberia.
Humans did hunt mammoths, sabre-tooths etc.
Parent
Re:When did they die out? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are no stupid questions. But there are stupid places to ask them. Try [google.ie] elsewhere [google.ie], for better sources of information.
Parent
Re:When did they die out? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? Considering the amount of SEO spam that's corrupted Google search results, considering the cabals, corruption and low quality of most wikipedia results, and considering that many of the world's experts on most science and technology fields ARE regularly reading slashdot, then I seriously doubt there IS ANY better place to ask a science related question than on this site.
Of course, the downside is that there are some grumpy, elitist pedants here.
Parent
Re:When did they die out? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Crocodiles!=dinos, and mammal coexisted w/ dinos (Score:4, Informative)
Crocodilians [wikipedia.org] do not come from dinosaurs, although they are related, i.e. their earliest common ancestor was neither a dinosaur nor a crocodilian. On the other hand, the earliest common ancestor of birds was a dinosaur.
Also, mammals existed at least 125Mya [wikipedia.org]:
The oldest known marsupial is Sinodelphys, found in 125M-year old early Cretaceous shale in China's northeastern Liaoning Province. The fossil is nearly complete and includes tufts of fur and imprints of soft tissues.
Parent
Re:Crocodiles!=dinos, and mammal coexisted w/ dino (Score:4, Informative)
>Well the placental mammals, like us and almost every other mammal, did not evolve until after the Asteroid event.
Wrong. There were plenty of mammals in the Mesozoic. And according to the University of California Museum of Paleontology "Eutherians first became common in central Asia during the Upper Cretaceous." Eutherians being the technically correct name for placental mammals.
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/mammal/eutheria/eutheriafr.html [berkeley.edu]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Repenomamus was a Triconodont, which is its own category, not a modern marsupial or placental.
Mammoth hairballs? (Score:5, Funny)
And I thought cats were disgusting...
Re:Mammoth hairballs? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Mammoth hairballs? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Just fill in the remaining genes (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Or the myostatin "bug" found in belgian blue? =P
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Um.... I thought they used frog DNA to fill-in the missing sequences. Which is how supposedly "sterile" dinosaurs were able to give birth.
Re:Just fill in the remaining genes (Score:5, Informative)
the tasmanian devil is still alive and well
I don't think "well" is the right word [sciencedaily.com] to describe the Tasmanian devil's status.
Parent
This is huge! (Score:5, Funny)
It could be the solution of how how to maintain legacy systems in generations to come. They just need to start mapping the genes of a COBOL programmer.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
> They just need to start mapping the genes of a COBOL programmer.
Why would you do that? They are evil!
Little green scaly evil punks. Always with their traps and their "I'm dragon subtype I can reach godhood before level 6". Bah!
Mark my words. You'll regret not having cloned griffins first.
Mammoths reborn in WoTLK (Score:2)
There are woolly mammoths in the latest World of Warcraft expansion. They're huge, fierce, and scary looking.
pricetag: $10 million, right now (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/science/20mammoth.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink [nytimes.com]
right NOW, we can do this
apparently it would be tedious, but a number of technical hurdles have been overcome lately to the point where this is really conceivable to do, and the talk about doing it isnot theoretical, but practical
1. most recent modern genome decoders don't care that the dna is shredded into pieces
2. encapsulated in keratin (hair), the dna is not so tainted by bacterial dna like it is in bone
3. a new technique allows modifying modern elephant dna 50,000 genomic sites at a time, rather than one by one, so the proper egg can be arrived at after a few generations of reconstruction, implanted in a female elephant, and voila
this can be done, right NOW!
amazing
even more freaky: we can do the same, right now, with neanderthal!
using chimpanzee as a starting point for ethical considerations, we can also, right NOW, bring a neanderthal back to life
that's pretty freaky. these guys wouldn't be dumb. someone would have to explain to the guy that he is not the last of his species, he's an artifically reconstructed clone of a guy who died 50,000 years ago. no one of his kind exists anymore
but we revived a wooly old friend of yours too. here's a spear, happy hunting
just don't eat the dodo
or the quagga
or the irish elk
or the auroch
or the sabretooth though
really really freaky and amazing
Do we really want to? (Score:3, Insightful)
Do we really want to do this to a sentient and intelligent species?
For a start, the Neanderthal will be a circus freak for all his life. Whatever his other achievements or shortcomings would be, he'll still be that reconstructed Neanderthal. I doubt that he could have a normal job or relationship or interact normally with new people, without getting back to that aspect that he's the only Neanderthal in the world. Even assuming that all people he'll meet are nice and tactful, it's still that curiosity aspect
Acfually, there isn't (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, apparently there is exactly 0% Neanderthal in us, if you look at the DNA. You can see the differences between Neanderthals and the common ancestor (since that's what made them Neanderthals), and you can see the differences between humans and the common ancestor (since that's what makes us humans.) The two sets just don't overlap. All the genes that made Neanderthals be Neanderthals are not present in us.
The easiest to look at is the mitochondrial DNA, since it's pretty small, and it's been mapped
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, but smaller frontal lobes, which are what really matter.
Yeah, well, that's a bit of a grey area.
[ducks, runs]
The only important question (Score:5, Funny)
Do they taste good??
Re:The only important question (Score:5, Interesting)
No. Mammoth meat probably smells and tastes like limburger cheese.
University of Michigan paleontologist Daniel Fisher had a theory that early Americans of 10,000 years ago used frozen lakes as refrigerators to store mastodon and mammoth meat. He tested his theory when a friend's horse died of old age. Fisher dropped chunks of horse meat of up to 170 pounds below the ice in a nearby pond. He anchored some pieces to the bottom. Every week or so he cooked and chewed a piece of meat, and eventually swallowed each bite. The meat remained safe to eat well into the summer. The theory is that as the water warmed in the spring, lactobacilli (the bacteria found in yogurt & cheese) colonized the meat, rendering it inhospitable to other pathogens. So despite the smell and taste (similar to Limburger cheese), the meat remained safe to eat.
http://www.foodreference.com/html/f-mammoth-meat.html [foodreference.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, you think mammoth meat probably smelled and tasted like Limburger cheese because a guy stuck horsemeat in a pond for months, and then it smelled and tasted like Limburger? A couple of clues as to where you might have gone wrong - fresh horsemeat does not taste or smell like Limburger, and mammoth meat probably did not require long term pond storage before it could be eaten.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
In Soviet Russia, mammoth mount YOU!
aka "Fatal Attraction 2".
Re:Now that we maybe can make a mammoth (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Now that we maybe can make a mammoth (Score:5, Funny)
I don't think you understand. The internet and slashdot was an elaborate ploy by Nivens to get more fans. He planted the ideas for the internet a long time ago and nurtured it until the web was born. He then planted the idea to create a forum for nerds. Once this was done he waited for critical mass and posted this line. Now people like me who stopped reading fiction some time ago, will see this name and investigate on the very same internet! Its rather brilliant. The only thing is that if we comply and read, then he will no longer have a use for the internet and will likely have it taken down (his purpose being completed). To prevent the destruction of this invaluable tool, I will boycott reading any further.
and with my first paranoid rant done, I am ready to start my day!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
How about a furby? [cnn.com]