I just don’t get this whole woolly mammoth thing.
The idea regularly pops up with various people and companies (both private and public/academic) claiming they’re definitely going to do it.
But in every instance, the scientific specifics are not addressed. Every instance to date has simply been either a pure publicity stunt (with no intention to actually follow through) or hubris that they can overcome the significant technical obstacles (and then we never hear from them again after they predictably fail). I wonder which one it is this time.
First, there’s the ‘why’ question. No rationale I’ve yet seen has convinced me that it’s worthwhile. The whole ‘restoring the ecosystem’ angle is ridiculous.
But aside from that, there are the practical issues. How is this going to be done? I cannot imagine that a new mammoth can be cloned from cells taken from mammoth remains (ie. the somatic cell nuclear transfer technique that has been used to clone a variety of extant animals). The genomic damage will simply be too great. Yes, scientists have managed to clone a dead rat that was frozen in a lab freezer (-20oC) for a dozen years or so. But that’s not thousands of years ago in the open environment like the mammoth. Even if they can generate a cloned embryo via SCNT, the technique relies on implantation and gestation in a surrogate mother. There’s no indication that extant elephants can gestate a mammoth embryo.
So, what this leaves is the idea of extracting mammoth DNA from remains and isolating a few individual genes. Isolating a few mammoth genes may be possible, as opposed to having an intact entire mammoth genome which is highly unlikely. Then, it might be possible to take elephant cells and swap in a few mammoth genes to replace to elephant genes, then clone from the modified cells (which is much more likely as it’s an extant species). Of course, what you end up with is an elephant with a few mammoth genes, not a woolly mammoth. Calling it a "hybrid" is absurd. It will be 99.99% elephant.