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