Is a mammoth clone possible/ethical?

Walter: Since I have shown you on our other website that we have unearthed the remains of T. Rex (fur, bone, and tissue) and have already sequenced the DNA of Mammoths, why the question? Since we know the code, it's only a matter of time before we put theory into practice. Hope your patent is still valid?
 
<B>Warning: Valich crapola alert!</B>
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valich said:
Since I have shown you on our other website that we have unearthed the remains of T. Rex (fur, bone, and tissue)
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Maybe, but was DNA extracted?


valich said:
….and have already sequenced the DNA of Mammoths
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Have we? How much mammoth DNA do you think we have sequenced?


valich said:
Since we know the code, it's only a matter of time before we put theory into practice.
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Really? Can you tell us how we can use DNA sequence alone to produce a whole new animal?
 
valich said:
Walter: Since I have shown you on our other website that we have unearthed the remains of T. Rex (fur, bone, and tissue) and have already sequenced the DNA of Mammoths, why the question? Since we know the code, it's only a matter of time before we put theory into practice. Hope your patent is still valid?
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T. rex fur? Where's this again?

Geoff
 
T. rex.: Last year they found an intact femur bone covered with fur, soft tissues, blood vessels, proteins involved in the bone formation: the skies the limit on what they can do with this: 70 mya.

"The new study, published in the respected journal Science, revealed the presence of morphological objects that seem to be blood vessels with endothelial nuclei visible, red blood cells, and osteocytes. Scientists removed the inner cortical bone from the femur and soaked it for 7 days in a solution of dilute acid to remove the surrounding bone. The resulting tissue was flexible and retained at least some cellular and subcellular structures." http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth/dinoblood.html

Excellent photos from original posting by MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7285683/

Full text about the blood vessels: "Tyrannosaurus Blood Vessels Found," by Erik Stakstad: http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2005/324/2

Mass spectroscopy could be used for DNA analysis: "If the cells consist of original material, paleontologists might be able to extract new information about dinosaurs. For instance, they could use the same sort of protein antibody testing that helps biologists determine the evolutionary relationships of living organisms. "There's a reasonable chance that there may be intact proteins, even DNA might be extracted," says David Martill of the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0324_050324_trexsofttissue.html
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/307/5717/1952
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/sci;307/5717/1852b
 
OK, I get the first one! Would love to have a mammoth as a pet.

As to the patentability, I believe that what would be patentable would be the technique for taking a genome on paper (or computer disk) and using that to construct a chromosome. While we can go the other direction (gene sequencing), I don't believe we can yet take the data, and construct the actual genes on a chromosome, etc.

The T. rex proteins could be used to deduce the genes that coded for them, but it is unlikely that there is enough intact material (unless there are complete cellular nuclei) to get a complete T. rex genome. Better go back to looking for baby T. rex blood (and a few white cells, with nuclei) in amberized mosquitoes, ala Jurassic Park style.

Thanks for the pics, Valich.
 
Walter: I agree 100%, but I qualify it by saying "yet." Scientific advancement and technology are moving at too fast of a pace to be predictable.

Also, you know something about prokarytes that intriques you about the DNA loop that I don't understand or know. What is the connection you see in this when we're discussing flagellum evolution. What puzzles me is why the same 9 microtubule in centriole organization from spindles to cilia. There's a protein mutation here from prokaryotes to eukaryotes, but why the same 9-configuration. It's a protein mutation in the centosome? Probably should post the reply on the other forum.
 
valich said:
T. rex.: Last year they found an intact femur bone covered with fur, soft tissues, blood vessels, proteins involved in the bone formation: the skies the limit on what they can do with this: 70 mya.

"The new study, published in the respected journal Science, revealed the presence of morphological objects that seem to be blood vessels with endothelial nuclei visible, red blood cells, and osteocytes. Scientists removed the inner cortical bone from the femur and soaked it for 7 days in a solution of dilute acid to remove the surrounding bone. The resulting tissue was flexible and retained at least some cellular and subcellular structures." http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth/dinoblood.html

Excellent photos from original posting by MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7285683/

Full text about the blood vessels: "Tyrannosaurus Blood Vessels Found," by Erik Stakstad: http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2005/324/2

Mass spectroscopy could be used for DNA analysis: "If the cells consist of original material, paleontologists might be able to extract new information about dinosaurs. For instance, they could use the same sort of protein antibody testing that helps biologists determine the evolutionary relationships of living organisms. "There's a reasonable chance that there may be intact proteins, even DNA might be extracted," says David Martill of the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0324_050324_trexsofttissue.html
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/307/5717/1952
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/sci;307/5717/1852b
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Where is the fur?

Where is the DNA? (could and might are not are and is)
 
I accept that this is a fascinating debate. How exciting would it be to see a 'real live' woolly mammoth? Or even a prehistoric gnat for that matter (although the impact would not be quite the same)? Putting aside the moral debate - 'because we could doesn't mean to say we should' I feel I must highlight something about human interactions with animals generally -

human intervention = bad for animal (on so many levels!)

Modern 'man' is destroying in less than two centuries what the process of evolution has delivered over millions of years.

Before we consider the practicalities of cloning long extinct animals perhaps we could focus our attention on finding a way to preserve what we already have before we face the very real possibility of mass extinction within OUR OWN lifetimes :(

Could we preserve intact DNA of every threatened species now as a precautionary measure?
A Clone of Ark? :p sorry!

Or is someone somewhere doing that already? :confused:
 
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valich said:
T. rex.: Last year they found an intact femur bone covered with fur, soft tissues, blood vessels, proteins involved in the bone formation: the skies the limit on what they can do with this: 70 mya.
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The “skies (sic) the limit”? Has anyone done anything other than photograph the samples and describe morphology? What do you think will be achieved using these samples?

And you didn’t answer my question(s):

You said....
valich said:
....and have already sequenced the DNA of Mammoths
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And I asked....
Hercules Rockefeller said:
Have we? How much mammoth DNA do you think we have sequenced?
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Hercules:

Your valid criticism of my hasty statement is well noted. I got carried away in the moment!

Since we know that some substitutions do occur without any ill effect on the organism (random mutations of no effect), I wonder if we used the protein to create our own 'synthetic' DNA that would code for that protein, if that would still be viable. Probably not if done for large chunks of the DNA, possibly so for smuch smaller portions?

Walter
 
Walter L. Wagner said:
Since we know that some substitutions do occur without any ill effect on the organism (random mutations of no effect), I wonder if we used the protein to create our own 'synthetic' DNA that would code for that protein, if that would still be viable. Probably not if done for large chunks of the DNA, possibly so for smuch smaller portions?
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Yes indeed, you’ve hit upon a very interesting topic here. You are quite correct that ‘silent’ point mutations can occur that alter the codon but don’t alter the amino acid that is encoded. In theory it would seem that the specific codons used to encode each amino acid of a protein are not relevant. In other words, it’s the primary amino acid sequence of the protein that is important, not which codons are used to encode that protein.

However, in practice this is not the case. There is a “codon bias” that exists for most organisms. Over the whole genome, organisms tend to favour particular codons for particular amino acids. If you take a gene from one organism in place it in another organism with a different codon bias, that gene will often not be expressed with the same efficiency as it would if it were composed of codons reflecting the endogenous codon bias. Mind you, this isn’t an all-or-nothing scenario. In such an instance, the gene might have a reduced expression level but will still be functional.

So when it comes to silent point mutations which alter single base pairs in single codons of a gene, codon bias is not a factor. Codon bias isn’t usually a major factor when dealing with genetic engineering experiments where a single gene from another organism is inserted. However, in the hypothetical thought experiment where a woolly mammoth genome is artificially constructed from its proteome, there will be intermittent incorrect codon bias across the whole genome. Even if we could somehow create a new embryo from the artificial genome, embryonic development is reliant on a staggeringly complex interplay of gene expression levels. Perturbations in single gene expression levels can have significant results. I doubt it would be viable.

And of course this hypothetical experiment totally overlooks the fact the proteome can suggest only the DNA sequence for the open reading frames of genes. The amino acid sequences of proteins give no information on promoter sequences, upstream and downstream enhancer sequences, and 5’ and 3’ untranslated regions of the mRNA, all of which play vital roles in controlling gene expression. Without this info there is no way to artificially construct a viable genome from a proteome sequence.
 
"Extinct Mammoth DNA Decoded: The 5,000 DNA letters spell out a large chunk of the genetic code of its mitochondria, published in the online edition of Nature....The team of researchers - from Germany, the UK, and the US - extracted and analysed mammoth DNA using a new technique that works on even the tiny quantities of fossilised bone - in this case 200 milligrams. 46 chunks of DNA sequence were matched up and arranged in order, giving a complete record of the mammoth's mitochondrial DNA.

The complete mitochondrial DNA of an extinct animal has been sequenced before but only for the flightless bird, the moa, which died out about 500 years ago, says Dan Bradley, an expert in ancient DNA at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4535190.stm

What is this "new technique" that they used?
 
I read somewhere that some mini wooly mammoths, size-reduced because they were on an island off Alaska, survived until circa 8,000 years ago, long after their close cousins had died out on the mainland. Do we have any more information on that. I'll bet that that DNA is much fresher.

Thanks for the update on proteomes, by the way, Hercules!

Kind of reminds me of the mini-humanoids (not pygmy homo sapiens, but in the homo genus) that developed on that Pacific island (Homo florensis?), in which many species down-size to be competitive on islands.
 
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