Major DNA Breakthrough Could Lead To Woolly Mammoth Resurrection

Me: What next, Dinosaurs from Chicken Eggs - you remember the movies “Lost World”

Major DNA Breakthrough Could Lead To Woolly Mammoth Resurrection

July 31, 2024

Scientists have made a jaw-dropping discovery that could bring woolly mammoths back from the dead—or at least get us one step closer. They’ve uncovered a massive, 52,000-year-old chromosome from a well-preserved mammoth fossil in Siberia, offering an unprecedented look at the ancient beast’s DNA. This massive genetic find, which is a million times longer than previous samples, reveals detailed insights into how mammoths’ genes worked, especially those that gave them their iconic shaggy coats. With this groundbreaking data, researchers are now closer than ever to understanding how to revive these Ice Age giants, though some experts caution that bringing them back might be risky.

Major DNA Breakthrough Could Lead To Woolly Mammoth Resurrection 1

While the concept of bringing long-extinct animals back to life gained widespread attention with the release of Jurassic Park in 1993, the Woolly Mammoth is a separate relic from not too long ago that is the focus of most discussions regarding de-extinction. John Hammond was wrong on many counts—don’t put man-eating animals in your theme park, for example—but he was correct on one important point: genetic knowledge is necessary to revive extinct animals. and in large quantities reports Popular Mechanics.

When it comes to the woolly mammoth, ancient DNA fragments have been discovered buried in fossils that have been excavated from the frozen tundra of Earth. However, the DNA fragments only contain about 100 base pairs, which is far from sufficient to provide a complete genetic portrait of this magnificent pachyderm. However, a recently conducted multinational study led by Rice University researchers has found a fossilized chromosome from a 52,000-year-old mammoth that perished in what is now Siberia and was effectively freeze-dried. This chromosomal discovery, which is upwards of a million times longer than the typical 100 base pairs, reveals both the genes that were active in the epidermal tissue of the living cell and how its genome was arranged. The study’s findings were released in the journal Cell.

“Fossil chromosomes are a game-changer,” Baylor University’s Olga Dudchenko, a co-author of the study, said in a press statement. “Knowing the shape of an organism’s chromosomes allows us to assemble the entire DNA sequence of extinct creatures, enabling insights that were previously impossible.”

Not surprisingly, the researchers found that the woolly mammoth had 28 pairs of chromosomes, the same number as contemporary Asian elephants and that the woolly mammoths’ hairy coat was caused by active genes in their epidermis that stimulated the formation of hair follicles.

“For the first time,” Marc Marti-Renom, a researcher at the Centre Nacional d’Anàlisi Genòmica in Barcelona and co-author of the study, said in another press statement, “we have a woolly mammoth tissue for which we know roughly which genes were switched on and which genes were off. This is an extraordinary new type of data, and it’s the first measure of cell-specific gene activity of the genes in any ancient DNA sample.”

With the use of extant elephant data, scientists were able to construct a three-dimensional model of the chromosomes. That’s mostly because the chromosomes were maintained in a glass-like condition by the timely freeze-drying procedure, which prevented individual DNA fragments from migrating too far and allowed the structures to remain intact throughout biological epochs.

The team then employed a method called “Hi-C” that enables scientists to identify how different regions of DNA interact with one another in the nucleus. Marti-Renom likens this approach to trying to solve a puzzle with three billion pieces without even having a picture of the finished product to examine. Ultimately, this information was combined with DNA sequencing by the researchers to produce a genome map of the woolly mammoth.

Despite the enthusiasm of biotech startups to revive the woolly mammoth, numerous experts have cautioned against the idea, stating that, at best, humans create an elephant hybrid that is unfit for the natural world or, at worst, we bring an invasive species into the Arctic tundra. For the time being, this information will mostly aid researchers in comprehending how genomes influence the evolution of traits in various contexts, but eventually, this chromosomal model may contribute to the resuscitation of the Ice Age symbol.

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Me: What next, Dinosaurs from Chicken Eggs - you remember the movies “Lost World”