How mammoth will be the Wooly Mammoth marching on the Artic Tundra Again!!

By Parikshit (Check out his blog here)

Dolly - The Pathbreaker & Mind Shaker

05 July 1996 can be marked as a rather special date in the history of modern science.  Dolly the first ever case of cloning a mammal had succeeded. Kept a close secret her birth was disclosed in a media leak in 1997 eight months after her birth. A frog cloning project had succeeded in the past but never a mammal. Dolly was cloned from an adult somatic cell by associates of the Roslin Institute in Scotland, using the process of nuclear transfer from a cell taken from a mammary gland. Her cloning proved that a cloned organism could be produced from a mature cell from a specific body part.

Dolly had three mothers, one provided the egg, and another the DNA, and a third carried the cloned embryo to term. The process involved the cell nucleus from an adult cell being transferred into an unfertilized oocyte that has had its cell nucleus removed. The hybrid cell is then stimulated to divide by an electric shock, and when it develops into a blastocyst it is implanted in a surrogate mother.

Apart from the Dolly being a scientific mega breakthrough, her birth created waves in the moral circles. Dolly epitomised growing human power over nature which lead to some of the deepest moral debates. 

A month after Dolly’s birth was announced, President Bill Clinton barred use of federal funds for human cloning. President George W. Bush went further, limiting federal funding for research on human embryonic stem cells derived by means that destroy human embryos and to just stem cell lines already available—an action reversed in 2009 by President Barack Obama.

Is De-Extinction same as Cloning

Is De-Extinction to meet the same fate? How similar is it to cloning? This a question for today.

De Extinction includes technologies to create mammal proxies using back-breeding, cloning, and gene editing.

Genetic engineering, specifically CRISPR, is being widely used in addressing de-extinction. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) is an engineered cellular technology. CRISPR has two main functions: an RNA guide or libraries that scientists program to target specific locations on a genome and the Cas9 protein that acts as molecular scissors. In a way, CRISPR is a cut-and-paste tool that deletes or adds genetic information. The tool recognizes and cuts specific DNA inside a cell nucleus. The cuts activate repairs so that scientists can edit DNA.

Collosal Laboratory has laid the road map of bringing back the Woolly Mammoth in the following 12 Steps.

Step 1: Collect Asian Elephant DNA

Step 2: Sequence the Asian Elephant Genome

Step 3: Collect Viable Woolly Mammoth Tissue Samples

Step 4: Sequence the Woolly Mammoth Genome

Step 5: Identify Traits to Edit within the Asian Elephant Genome

Step 6: Build CRISPR Libraries that Will Allow for Editing Identified Genes within the Asian Elephant Genome

Step 7: Insertion of CRISPR Libraries

Step 8: Verify that the Cold Resistant Traits Are Expressed in Hybrid Cells

Step 9: Embryo Transfer

Step 10: Implantation

Step 11: Gestation

Step 12: The Culmination is the Birth of the Woolly Mammoth

The funding has come in by way of USD 15 million seed fund that grew to 60 mills through donations and crowd funding which has enabled Colossal Biosciences to set the ball rolling for Woolly Mammoth to return by 2027.   

Why De-Extinct at All

The scientist fraternity believes that the only way for us to restore the ecological balance is undoing what we have done in history and refill the voids in the ecosystem which were created when species became extinct.

It is believed that bringing Woolly Mammoth like creatures back to the tundra could help recreate the steppe ecosystem. Because grass absorbs less sunlight than trees, this would cause the ground to absorb less heat and in turn keep the carbon pools and their greenhouse gases on ice for longer. Large numbers of the animals would also trample snow cover, stopping it from acting like insulation for the ground and allowing the permafrost to feel the effects of the bitter Arctic winters. Again, this would, in theory, keep the ground colder for longer.

This form of mammoth de-extinction and reintroduction could therefore promote grasslands and simultaneously slow the thawing of these frozen soils.

Limitations & Challenges

These creatures will always be like and not the actual original species. Genome Sequencing could always bring back extinct pathogens which can affect humans today.

The new species created can always be susceptible to existing pathogens which may cause a wipe out.

The expensive programs of De-Extinction can eat into funds essential for conservation for species on the verge of extinction and ecology conservation programs.

Genetic Engineering funding can lead to rogue scientists getting access to funds and infrastructure for human reproductive cloning & genetic manipulation which have been legally opposed by most nations. 

The Moral Question

Back in school a physics teacher was talking about moon missions and I remember asking her if it was worth the effort when we can’t seem to make houses for all of humanity on earth itself? Wise, as good teachers are, she taught us about offset gains. Gains of learning things and technologies which can be used in other fields while working on a totally different project. Genetic engineering endeavours have great potential to develop disease curing procedures for the betterment of humanity.

That said, the moral question still remains. Do we as humans have the moral rights to control nature in this way? Wouldn’t healthier but very old humans in great numbers be a detriment to ecology? Alternatively, limiting the means to chosen few will lead to social divides we haven’t ever seen before. Ageless soldiers, younger population, many more Adalines from the ‘Age of Adaline’ will leave many more questions that Sophie wouldn’t be able to answer in the garden of “Sophie’s World” as our planet and ecology would have been manipulated in unnatural and sometimes unintelligible ways!!

Are we wise enough to control such endeavours? The question looms large, larger than the Wooly Mammoth of Tundra !!

This blog is part of a series of entries received for the OpenTakshashila National Science Day Blog Contest 2024 on the theme of ‘Scientists are bringing the woolly mammoth back - should they?’ The blog is republished with permission. The views belong to the author(s) and do not represent Takshashila’s position on the issue.