Does cloning gives back MAMOTH?

Japanese researchers will launch
a project this year to resurrect
the long-extinct mammoth by
using cloning technology to
bring the ancient pachyderm
back to life in around five years
time.
The researchers will try to revive
the species by obtaining tissue
this summer from the carcass of
a mammoth preserved in a
Russian research laboratory, the
Yomiuri Shimbun reported.
"Preparations to realise this goal
have been made," Akira Iritani,
leader of the team and a
professor emeritus of Kyoto
University, told the mass-
circulation daily.
Under the plan, the nuclei of
mammoth cells will be inserted
into an elephant's egg cell from
which the nuclei have been
removed, to create an embryo
containing mammoth genes, the
report said.
The embryo will then be inserted
into an elephant's uterus in the
hope that the animal will
eventually give birth to a baby
mammoth.
The elephant is the closest
modern relative of the mammoth,
a huge woolly mammal believed
to have died out with the last Ice
Age.
Some mammoth remains still
retain usable tissue samples,
making it possible to recover
cells for cloning, unlike
dinosaurs, which disappeared
around 65 million years ago and
whose remains exist only as
fossils.
Researchers hope to achieve
their aim within five to six years,
the Yomiuri said.
The team, which has invited a
Russian mammoth researcher
and two US elephant experts to
join the project, has established a
technique to extract DNA from
frozen cells, previously an
obstacle to cloning attempts
because of the damage cells
sustained in the freezing
process.
Another Japanese researcher,
Teruhiko Wakayama of the Riken
Centre for Developmental Biology,
succeeded in 2008 in cloning a
mouse from the cells of another
that had been kept in
temperatures similar to frozen
ground for 16 years.
The scientists extracted a cell
nucleus from an organ of a dead
mouse and planted it into the
egg of another mouse which
was alive, leading to the birth of
the cloned mouse.
Based on Wakayama's
techniques, Iritani's team devised
a method to extract the nuclei of
mammoth eggs without
damaging them.
But a successful cloning will also
pose challenges for the team,
Iritani warned.
"If a cloned embryo can be
created, we need to discuss,
before transplanting it into the
womb, how to breed (the
mammoth) and whether to
display it to the public," Iritani
said.
"After the mammoth is born, we
will examine its ecology and
genes to study why the species
became extinct and other
factors."
More than 80 percent of all
mammoth finds have been dug
up in the permafrost of the vast
Sakha Republic in eastern Siberia.
Exactly why a majority of the
huge creatures that once strode
in large herds across Eurasia and
North America died out towards
the end of the last Ice Age has
generated fiery debate.
Some experts hold that
mammoths were hunted to
extinction by the species that
was to become the planet's
dominant predator -- humans.
Others argue that climate change
was more to blame, leaving a
species adapted for frozen climes
ill-equipped to cope with a
warming world.
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