Mammoth Blood Brought Back to Life

Using ancient DNA from Siberian specimens, a team of Australian researchers have managed to resurrect the proteins of mammoth blood and figure out precisely how they survived such a hostile environment.

Professor Alan Cooper, director of the Australian Center for Ancient DNA at the University of Adelaide, was the co-author of a study published in Nature Genetics that explained how they used modern bacteria to recreate woolly mammoth hemoglobin:

"It is the same as if we went back 30,000 years and stuck a needle into a living mammoth.... This is true palaeobiology, as we can study and measure how these animals functioned as if they were alive today."

Cooper's team discovered that mammoth blood functioned as a sort of anti-freeze: able to remain liquid enough to deliver oxygen even though most mammalian blood thickens as the temperature drops.

As to the inevitable comparisons to Jurassic Park, Cooper says the technique relies on DNA, which is not preserved in fossils, making it unlikely it can be used on species such as dinosaurs that died out millions of years ago.

Source

Well this is pretty amazing if you ask me. Can't wait to go to the zoo and see one of these suckers, that is of course if it can be properly contained.

Crazy, I was JUST watching the old 1980's Arthur C Clarke Mysterious World episode where they were talking about the Siberian Mammoth specimens and how they wanted to bring them back to life through cloning.

Sad that it took 25+ years to actually take this step.

But I am happy it is finally happening.

lets bring them back. we owe the earth that much. plus it'd be some good eats

reply to post by Totalstranger


Yeah with all the species we humans have drove into extinction, I think we owe it to bring a few back.

Now it all makes sense, I know that every that happens in life has a meaning/reason/purpose for whatever it is meant for.

I was shown a picture like many other's of the Mammoth a while back and it had a hidden message in this. Well this is just the start to it all where there is no such thing as "start and "end".

No offense, but how did they obtain functional DNA, since it was not preserved in fossils?

How does having the DNA tell a scientist their blood had properties of maintaining its function at lower body temperatures? After all, simple proteins do not tell about enormous amounts of information that would remain unobtainable. How do they know what the red blood cell count was, which can make a significant difference in the transport of oxygen, regardless of the protein content of the blood? They would have no means of obtaining a hematocrit, which also is extremely important to this purpose.

Without making vast numbers of assumptions, they could not make these kinds of statements from only the data obtained from serum proteins.

I think I smell a bit of an investigational skunk here!

reply to post by Truth1000


The Siberian mammoth wasn't a fossil was it?

ScienceDaily (July 24, 2007) — University of Michigan paleontologist Daniel Fisher just returned from Siberia where he spent a week as part of a six-member international team that examined the frozen, nearly intact remains of a 4-month-old female woolly mammoth.

Source

That could have helped I suppose.

This non-fossilized specimen would be MORE likely to allow a Jurassic Park scenario than fossilized specimens.

If it had intact tissues, then they are studying more than just the simple DNA of the mammoth, which WOULD allow these sorts of conclusions to be made.

However, an investigational scientist should have the wherewithall to say, "We not only used the DNA, but used tissue specimens, including blood residue, vascular tissues, etc."

The release of information on WHAT you studied is essential to discussing what your findings are. Either they used only DNA, or they used DNA plus tissue specimens. You can't have it both ways in investigational science.

reply to post by Truth1000


I understand your point but at the beginning of the article it mentions:

Using ancient DNA from Siberian specimens

which led me to believe there was tissue, just because I remember the story of the Siberian mammoth and how well it was preserved.

That is understood. Specimens, however, could mean anything - blood, tissue, bone marrow, dental DNA, tissue ribosomal DNA, and simply saying "specimens" would be like the police reporting that a crime had been committed by "a person." What kind of person?

It is just that, in MANY years gone by, I did medical research, and always tend to look first for fallacies in a research item, before deciding whether to accept their findings. Information and data are so frequently misused that I usually do not believe anything that seems out of place, based on the information reported. If they had answered these questions first, I wouldn't have needed to ask them.

Okay, this is scaring me.

Maybe there was a reason the mammoth died out.

I cannot think of the movie where they uncovered a mammoth in the ice and an insect that wiped them out was impossible to stop.

Hmmm.....let me try to find it.

As for finding the tissue. I am sure I have read articles about people finding carcasses and eating them. What is surprising though is that the DNA survived that long.

Also, the human race did not cause the extinction of this species of animals.

there have been a number of frozen woolly mammoths recovered over the years, giving viable DNA.

Should be noted, the Mammoths went extinct even in areas where there was not human populations, their demise wasn't due entirely to us.

If, however, we can bring back the species.. I'm all for it.
As well as dodo's and thylacines.
The issue is, though, would you even be able to release the revives creatures intot he wild, or would the environment have changed to much?

reply to post by Truth1000


Well said and that makes perfect sense. What better approach then to criticize the data first off? It's strategic, calls the BS and I completely understand where you're coming from. I'm the same way, only when it comes to religious ideals, subjects, philosophies etc... Gotta work on tuning that in more I guess.

Either way, thanks for the input.

I agree, Crossfate.

If there are significant errors, why bother studying the data, because it's probably screwed up as well.

Here is one quick example I can think of from about fifteen years ago.

A group of scientists working on a new blood pressure medicine found that by the raw data, the med from the company that paid for the research was little more effective than the older medicine it was meant to replace.

So did they report that? NO!

Instead, they began to look for people they could exclude from the study. For the people over 65, the percentage of responders to the older medicine had a slightly better result than the newer medicine. Therefore, they excluded everyone over age 65. That gave them an improvement in their products performance.

Several of the non-responders were also taking another medication type. By exluding anyone taking that medication class, they further improved their meds performance.

They kept doing this until they had about a 20% improvement of their drug over the older drug. THEN they reported their findings. Fortunately, an unpaid research intern spilled the beans, and the report was removed from circulation, never to be heard from again.

Reading the conclusions only will cause you to miss whether the research is valid or not!