Harvard geneticist George Church used DNA from Arctic permafrost woolly mammoth samples to copy 14 mammoth genes -- emphasizing those related to its chilly lifestyle.
"We prioritized genes associated with cold resistance including hairiness, ear size, subcutaneous fat and, especially, hemoglobin," Church told The Sunday Times.
Then, using a kind of DNA cut/paste system called CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat), Church dropped the genes into Asian elephant skin cells.
The result? A petri dish of elephant cells functioning normally with mammoth DNA in them, marking the first time mammoth genes have been on the job since the creature went extinct some 4,000 years ago, as Sarah Fecht, from Popular Science, noted.
Longer term, Church and his team hope to first create hybrid elephant/mammoth embryos, grown in artificial wombs, and then raise hybrid elephants that could be genetically wired to thrive in colder climes -- hopefully expanding their range to live at a greater remove from humans.
Longer, longer term, if the hybrid elephant can be created and successfully integrated in the wild, then the team might even try to bring back the woolly mammoth itself.
From Discovery News
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