Check out this answer from Consensus:
While the resurrection of woolly mammoths is a captivating concept, it faces substantial scientific, technical, and ethical hurdles. Current efforts are more focused on creating hybrids or ecological proxies rather than true de-extinction. The feasibility of cloning remains uncertain, and the ethical implications continue to be a topic of significant debate.
The idea of bringing woolly mammoths back to life has captured the imagination of scientists and the public alike. Advances in genetic engineering and cloning technologies have spurred discussions on the feasibility and implications of de-extincting this iconic Ice Age species. This synthesis examines the current state of research and the various perspectives on the possibility of resurrecting mammoths.
Key Insights
- Genetic Feasibility and Adaptations:
- Woolly mammoths have unique genetic adaptations for cold environments, such as changes in genes related to circadian biology, skin and hair development, lipid metabolism, and temperature sensation. These adaptations have been identified through sequencing and functional testing of mammoth genomes1.
- Cloning Challenges:
- De-extinction vs. Ecological Proxies:
- Some scientists argue that true de-extinction is not possible. Instead, they propose creating ecological proxies—organisms that are genetically engineered to resemble extinct species but are not exact replicas. For instance, adding mammoth genes to Asian elephants to create cold-tolerant hybrids3 4.
- Ethical and Conceptual Considerations:
- The ethical implications of de-extinction are significant. Questions arise about the moral responsibility of reviving extinct species and the potential ecological impacts. Additionally, there is debate over whether these genetically engineered organisms should be classified as true mammoths or hybrids4 5.
Can mammoths be brought back to life?
Love Dalén has answered Extremely Unlikely
An expert from Swedish Museum of Natural History in Genetics, Genomics, Evolutionary Biology, Paleobiology
There are essentially three ways an extinct species could be brought back to life:
1) Classic cloning, where the nucleus from an intact cell (from the extinct species) is transferred to an egg cell from a living relative.
2) Synthesis of entire chromosomes that are inserted into an egg cell.
3) Genome engineering techniques (e.g. CRIPSR / CAS9) that are used to edit the genome of a living relative, and by this process inserting genes from the extinct species in question.
For the woolly mammoth, all these approaches would be very difficult, if not impossible.
For approach nr. 1, it would be necessary to find a mammoth cell with an intact nucleus (i.e. the chromosomes would need to be more or less intact). To date, a very large number of exceptionally well-preserved mammoth remains have been tested using DNA technology, by my research group as well as those of my colleagues. The results unanimously show that the genomes in these samples are degraded into many tens of millions of fragments. And there is no way to put these back together (in the right order). This means that it in all likelihood is impossible to find a cell with intact chromosomes. In other words, classic cloning is out of the question.
For approaches nr 2 and 3, one would first need to generate an entire genome sequence. This has been done for the woolly mammoth (Palkopoulou et al. 2015, Current Biology). However, it is important to note that although the mammoth’s genome sequence is more or less complete, there are nonetheless some small (but possibly important) pieces missing. The reason is that we can only assemble the DNA sequences from mammoths using the elephant genome as a reference. Any genes that the mammoth had, and the elephant doesn’t, would be very difficult to identify and reconstruct. If such mammoth-specific genes existed and were important in order to resurrect the species, bringing the mammoth back would not work.
Moreover, for approach nr 2, the synthetic technology is to my knowledge not yet advanced enough to synthesise mammalian chromosomes.
For approach nr 3, the technology does exist, although at a scale where it likely would require a very long time until one has replaced all the thousands of genes and other important parts of the genome that differ between elephants and mammoths.
Unfortunately, for all three approaches to work, one would also need the fertilised egg to be inserted into an elephant female. Leaving aside the many ethical reasons why this is a bad idea (elephants are after all endangered), there are good reasons that it might not work anyway. The divergence time between elephants and mammoths is several millions of years, and this may very well mean that the mammoth egg or foetus will be aborted during the course of the pregnancy.
There has been some talk about using artificial wombs instead of female elephants as hosts. However, this is pure science fiction and something that we are unlikely to see become a reality anytime soon.
Can mammoths be brought back to life?
Patrícia Chrzanová Pečnerová has answered Extremely Unlikely
An expert from Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Evolutionary Biology, Palaeoecology, Genomics, Population Biology
Are scientists going to recreate a mammoth-like creature at some point?
Possibly yes, but rather than a couple of years (as the headlines claim), it might take generations from now.
Will we ever see a true woolly mammoth?
No.
Despite the incredible frequency with which media feed us “news” about the quest to clone the woolly mammoth, little progress has been reported so far. All updates from the Harvard Woolly Mammoth Revival team are communicated through public media rather than scientific peer-review process and these public articles are then recycled over and over again, so it is difficult to see how much real progress has been made beside the sensational headlines.
However, even Prof. George Church’s team openly declares that they are not bringing back the woolly mammoth but a mammoth-elephant hybrid. They are inserting mammoth genes into the DNA of modern elephants, which at best can lead to a mammoth-like elephant, never a true woolly mammoth.
To recreate a woolly mammoth, to start with we would need to know its complete genomic sequence and even though we now have numerous high-quality mammoth genomes, there are certainly pieces of their genome that remain completely unknown. For example, working with degraded mammoth DNA, which is only found in small pieces, requires that it is aligned against a reference genome – and for this elephant genome is used – so anything which is not similar enough or found in the elephant genome, is lost.
There are also attempts to find a super fresh piece of mammoth that would be retrieved directly from its permafrost grave and would contain a completely preserved nucleus. This would allow direct cloning (think Dolly the sheep), but the probability of such exceptionally preserved intact mammoth cell is extremely unlikely.
Nevertheless, the public interest in cloning the woolly mammoth is remarkably widespread, which is obvious also from the number of newspaper articles and nature documentaries on this topic. This means that scientists will certainly keep trying to bring back something that looks like a woolly mammoth.
If this will lead to advances in techniques that might help endangered species survive, e.g. by helping them adjust to quickly changing climatic and environmental conditions or by introducing lost genetic diversity, only then this spotlight story might move beyond the superficial Jurassic Park-style plot.
Can mammoths be brought back to life?
Alfred L Roca has answered Likely
An expert from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Genetics
There appear to be two aspects to this question.
Can the mammoth be brought back? Yes, with enough time and resources dedicated to this, though it would be a long slog since there are no living cells available for cloning the mammoth, the status of living elephants as eventual surrogates is uncertain, and stitching the DNA of a mammoth into a living cell would be very difficult.
However, it would not be impossible, so the the answer to “can they be brought back” would be “yes”.
Regarding the other aspect of the question, as to whether this is “imminent”, the answer is “extremely unlikely” as there would be a lot of steps and a lot of expense to get us there.
Can mammoths be brought back to life?
Richard Edwards has answered Extremely Unlikely
An expert from UNSW Sydney in Bioinformatics, Molecular Biology, Evolutionary Biology, Genomics, Genetics
Assuming “bring back” means recreate a woolly mammoth as it was before, then no. Even if we were able to get a *complete* woolly mammoth genome (not there yet) and then develop technology to re-write the genome of another organism (e.g. elephant), there would still be no guarantees that the organism produced would be the same as a woolly mammoth. As well as genetics, there are non-genetic factors that are passed on from mother (and sometimes father) to child during fertilisation and development, and we simply don’t know what effects they would have on development.
That said, if the question means, will we be able to make something woolly-mammoth-like, the answer is “almost certain”. CRISPR technology already allows multiple genome edits, and it should be possible to make enough of these to make an elephant more mammoth-like. Are we going to do so in the very near future? I doubt it, unless some rich philanthropist decides to chuck millions of dollars at the problem.
Can mammoths be brought back to life?
Ross Barnett has answered Unlikely
An expert from Durham University in Evolutionary Biology, Palaeobiology
While genomes have been sequenced from mammoths, the path from genome to live birth is extremely difficult and untested. A good source for understanding the complexity surrounding this issue is the book “How to clone a mammoth” by Prof. Beth Shapiro