cloning a extinct animal
- Thread starter orcot
- Start date
Sorry perhaps I haven't explained myself very well. My point was, are we not yet sufficiently advanced enough to know (and replicate) those processes in nature, which produce haploid cells? Certainly from what I know of biology, human sperm is created consantly from "normal" diploid cells. (I'm not sure about ova). We must have some idea of the enzymes, etc involved in this process?
My supposition was (any damage in the DNA due to degredation aside): Take a normal cell, split it by copying processes involved in nature, implant haploid cell into an existing African or Indian Elephant ovum.
Gametogenesis (regardless of sperm or ovum) is done by specialized cells and the process is highly complicated. Also during this process not only the partner chromosomes are separated but also each chromatid (each chromosome is made out of two chromatids) is separated in a second step. While the process is well known, one cannot recreate it easily in vivo. But even if we were able to create a haploid mammoth sperm cell in vitro:
you cannot put this consideration aside, as it is the main problem in cloning mammoths. If we had well-preserved DNA one would simply enucleate an ovum and inject the mammoth nucleus into it.
What would be the use to get a mammoth ovum with degraded DNA? Depending on how near modern elephants are to them they might or might not fuse with an elephant sperm, but what would be the advantage to inject a fully functional mammoth nucleus into an elephant ovum?
Remember, the main point still is that the mammoth genome is not preserved enough to allow simple cloning experiment.
Eagle9
Registered Senior Member
What do the scientists think, is it possible at least theoretically to restore/clone dinosaurs? As I was told (in various web-forums) for 65 million years the DNA information is terribly lost or distorted, but is there little chance for it? Does at least one biologist in the world work on this problem? 
Eagle9
Registered Senior Member
Well, imagine that we have the Dinosaur’s full DNA, then what? Is it enough for cloning/restoring the extinct animal (actually Dinosaur is not animal but never mind)? Or maybe something more is needed?
Dinosaur's are most surely animals (altough recreating the other 5 kingdoms are also possible [plants, fungi,bacteria and ... well look it up your self but their single celled organism]
But if you got intact DNA you need either a egg or a womb to grow the species in, then it's a question if the species can live of today's atmosphere (oxygen levels have changed over history) if it can fight off today's illnesses and if it can propperly feed of a avaible foodsource not to mention surviving faults in the cloning proces
Eagle9
Registered Senior Member
orcot
And is there something between "intact DNA" and "growing in eggs"? In other words finding intact DNA and then putting it in egg is enough? if we find intact DNA it will be dead organism and is it possible to "resurrect" it?
And do we know anything about Oxygen’s lever 65 million years ago?
I am all for cloning and making extinct animals. Bring 'em on! Nothing fills a zoo more than Jurassic Park!
I believe we have the technology to bring T-Rex back from the dust and I am all for it!
I would love to see a Brachiasaurus eating leaves from the MNH in NYC!
Bring it on- bring forth Frankenstein!
I believe we have the technology to bring T-Rex back from the dust and I am all for it!
I would love to see a Brachiasaurus eating leaves from the MNH in NYC!
Bring it on- bring forth Frankenstein!
I think in Australia the plan is to clone the Tasmanian Tiger, Australian Museum geneticists announced they'd replicated bits of Tasmanian tiger DNA taken from a 136-year-old thylacine specimen preserved in ethanol since 1866. The thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian tiger, was hunted to extinction in the 1800s. The last known living specimen died in 1936.
The replication occurred through a process known as Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), which indicated bits of DNA retrieved from the specimen were of good enough quality they might be able to function in a living cell.
In and of itself, that doesn't mean reproductive cloning is possible.
It just means researchers have avoided hitting an insurmountable wall, for now.
The next big step lies in assembling an entire genetic library of the animal. Such a library would, in turn, serve as a springboard toward reproductive cloning of the animal, probably through fertilizing an embryo implanted in a near species relative like the Tasmanian Devil.
The replication occurred through a process known as Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), which indicated bits of DNA retrieved from the specimen were of good enough quality they might be able to function in a living cell.
In and of itself, that doesn't mean reproductive cloning is possible.
It just means researchers have avoided hitting an insurmountable wall, for now.
The next big step lies in assembling an entire genetic library of the animal. Such a library would, in turn, serve as a springboard toward reproductive cloning of the animal, probably through fertilizing an embryo implanted in a near species relative like the Tasmanian Devil.