Woolly Mammoth Redux

Scientists have a huge degree of questing curiosity. Their minds explore possibilities and potentials. They think in ways unfamiliar to all those without that probing intellect searching for answers to the questions that intrigue them. Their insatiable drive to fully understand how and what nature represents to the world and its inhabitants which nature has created, drives them to pursue interests beyond the imagination of most.

Of course, restoring life to an animal held to have last been alive prehistorically is a fanciful conceit that has had its day in works of fiction, bringing shivers of excitement and dread down the spines of readers who know that such things, thankfully, are impossible. Nature creates, and brings life. Human beings are a result of one of nature's many experiments in existence. It is not within the scope of human experience to emulate nature.

But then, is that entirely true now, when those irrepressible, defiant and hubristic humans have ventured so far as to emulate nature indeed? Naturalists have long known and practised the cloning of plant species. It is a relatively simple process. Quite unlike the cloning of an animal, a far more complex and scientifically precise formula. Which humankind has pioneered and practised, to both acclaim and dread.

The cloning of animals has been successfully created. The animals that have resulted are absent the perfection of nature's own designs; they live troubled and abbreviated lives. Cloning pioneer Hwang Woo-Suk of South Korea's Sooam Biotech Research Foundation has achieved quite a reputation for himself, both as a cloning pioneer and as someone who created a sensation by faking human stem cells data.

Russian and South Korean scientists have joined forces to combine their expertise and experience in a joint research project for the purpose of recreating a woolly mammoth. Global warming had resulted in thawing permafrost in Siberia and in the process uncovering remains of woolly mammoths, long extinct. The Beijing Genomics Institute is also part of the project.

For that matter, Japanese scientists are also involved in the search to bring a ten-thousand-year-old mammoth back to life. "The first and hardest mission is to restore mammoth cells", explained Hwang In-Sung of Sooam Biotech. The search is on to isolate a well-reserved tissue with an undamaged genetic code.

Through replacing the nuclei of egg cells from an elephant with those from the mammoth's somatic cells, embryos with mammoth DNA may result, then planted into an elephant womb. Somatic cells are body cells from internal organs, from skin, bones and blood. The Sooam scientists plan to use an Indian elephant somatic cell nucleus transfer.

"This will be a really tough job, but we believe it is possible because our institute is good at cloning animals", said Hwang In-Sung. As a scientific diversion the project brings together scientists from various countries curious about the potential prospects of success. An explosive story of yet another scientific marvel may yet result from their efforts.

Mankind yet again playing around with nature's elements, challenging her primacy in all matters of existence.