Scientists use Genome sequencing to bring woolly mammoth clones closer

“It won’t be that long till we’re technically able to do it, but whether we should is a different question”, Lynch told Live Science, referring to cloning a mammoth. The hulking giants had thick layers of fur, small ears and tails and had sizable layers of subcutaneous fat. The researchers managed to resurrect the gene in the laboratory and placed in inside the cell of a human kidney.

Woolly mammoths, which last roamed the extremely cold steppes in northern Asia, Europe and North America some 10,000 years ago, are extensively studied because of the presence of their well-preserved skeletons, frozen carcasses, and depictions in prehistoric art.

The research identified alterations in several traits among mammoths like; protein production, fat metabolism, insulin signaling, skin and hair development, temperature sensation and circadian clock biology. By comparing its genome with that of its distant cousins, the Asian and African elephants, the researchers were able to determine which are the mammoth’s specific genes.

Modifying Asian elephants with mammoth genes could help the modern-day subtropical creatures live in colder locales, “possibly extending the geographical range of an existing endangered species northward to areas at much lower risk of conflict with humans”, Church said.

Though their research continues, the information they’ve gathered is enough to show promise that a comprehensive blueprint of the extinct animal can be created.

Mammoths had a distinctive version of a gene known to play a role in sensing outside temperature, moderating the biology of fat, and regulating hair growth. All these factors being considered, may have helped the mammoths adapt to the Arctic. And with these results it’s become clearer than ever how it could be done.

Mice who don’t have an active TRPV3 gene prefer cold temperatures, and have wavy hair and changes in their fat biology, Lynch said.

When transplanted into human cells in the lab, TRPV3 produced a protein that is less responsive to heat than an ancestral elephant version of the gene. However, this new analysis could give a rare look into their evolution, and help fill in that coding. You’d have to put in every mammoth-specific change, plus take away everything that’s unique to Asian elephants.

And lastly, the ending statement that Lynch stated was “they’re gone and who are we to bring it back?”

‘While I think it will soon be technically possible to resurrect a mammoth, it is not something that we should do. But, they more likely will opt not to, as most scientists think that extinct animals should remain extinct, as bringing them back would plunge them into a world very different from the one they had grown accustomed to.

Next the group tried to figure out what these genetic changes meant, looking up earlier studies of how changes in the same genes affected mice as a way to infer how they might have impacted mammoths.