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US $ 15 million to revive the mammoth

2021-09-15T08:53:09.823Z


Fifteen million dollars (about 12.7 million euros) to revive the woolly mammoth, a species that disappeared 4,000 years ago and that the American geneticist of Harvard University, George Church, wants to recreate in the laboratory thanks to the advances made by genetics in the recent years (ANSA)


Fifteen million dollars (about 12.7 million euros) to revive the woolly mammoth, a species that disappeared 4,000 years ago and that the American geneticist of Harvard University, George Church, wants to recreate in the laboratory thanks to the advances made by genetics in the last years.


The investment, CNN reports, comes from high-tech entrepreneur Ben Lamm, who together with Church founded the biosciences and genetics company Colossal precisely to carry out this project.



The goal is not to clone a mammoth because the DNA that researchers have managed to extract from the remains of woolly mammoths frozen in the permafrost is too fragmented and degraded: starting from the DNA of an Asian elephant, Church's group aims to create - through the genetic engineering - an elephant-mammoth hybrid identical to its extinct predecessor.



"Our goal is to have the first babies in the next four to six years," explains Lamm. The investment marks a major step forward in research in this area, comments Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School. So far this project "has been in the background, frankly ... but now we can really do it", comments Church: "This will change everything".



His team has analyzed the genomes of 23 species of living elephants and extinct mammoths, and scientists estimate that they will have to simultaneously program "more than 50 changes" to the Asian elephant's genetic code to give it the characteristics it needs to live in the Arctic. Features, explains Church, like a 10-centimeter layer of insulating fat and smaller ears that will help the hybrid cope with the cold better.



But there is no shortage of skeptics in the scientific community. According to Love Dalén, a lecturer in evolutionary genetics at the Stockholm Center for Paleogenetics, Church's work has scientific value particularly when it comes to the conservation of endangered species. However, Dalén wonders "what would be the point" of the research in progress: "First of all - he underlines - you don't get a mammoth, but a hairy elephant with fat deposits".

Source: ansa

All tech articles on 2021-09-15

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