Scientists might soon be able to create a hybrid embryo of an elephant and a woolly mammoth.
You might remember Manny, the woolly mammoth from the Ice Age movie trilogy? Well, scientists are on the brink of resurrecting the ancient beast!
In conversation with The Guardian, the leading scientist stated that the “de-extinction” effort by the Harvard team is just two years away from creating a hybrid embryo, in which mammoth traits would be programmed into an Asian elephant. The creature would then be partly elephant, but with features such as small ears, subcutaneous fat, long shaggy hair and cold-adapted blood. The hybrid woolly mammoth embryo would be created using DNA from specimens found frozen in Siberian ice.
Professor George Church, who heads the Harvard University team, stated that these modifications could help preserve the Asian elephant. However, others have raised ethical concerns about the project. Some scientists have questioned whether the hybrid, if a success, will be accepted by other elephants.
The project in started in 2015 and since then, researchers have increased the number of “edits” where mammoth DNA has been spliced into the elephant genome from 15 to 45. At the moment, there are plans to grow the hybrid animal within an artificial womb, rather than recruiting a female elephant as a surrogate mother. Reportedly, his lab is already capable of growing a mouse embryo in an artificial womb for 10 days.
He added, “Our aim is to produce a hybrid elephant-mammoth embryo. Actually, it would be more like an elephant with a number of mammoth traits. We’re not there yet, but it could happen in a couple of years. We’re working on ways to evaluate the impact of all these edits and basically trying to establish embryogenesis in the lab.” Currently, the team has stopped at the cell stage, but will soon move forward to create embryos. However, it would take many years before a serious attempt has been made at producing the new creature.
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