Highly acclaimed 1993 jurassic park installment? To the disappointment of many, it is completely impossible to clone a dinosaur. The most recent fossils date from 66 million years ago and are nothing more than rock (you cannot get genetic material from them). However, not all hope is lost for science fiction fans. Approximately 4600 years ago (an irrelevant period of time from the geological point of view on our planet) a species that lived with our ancestors, the woolly mammoth ( mammuthus primigenius ) , became extinct . The extreme conditions of siberia allowed numerous specimens of this species to remain frozen for thousands of years, preserving many of their internal tissues and organs practically intact.
Liquid blood has even been extracted from E Commerce Photo Editing a specimen found in recent years. The discovery of such well-preserved remains has made it possible to have genetic material and viable cell nuclei, putting on the table the possibility of cloning mammoths . The cloning of mammoths; so close yet so far... Although this sounds promising, there are several problems that this ambitious project will have to face. Among other things, incomplete reprogramming of epigenetic marks , which can result in aberrant dna methylation , erroneous patterns of histone modifications , or defective x-chromosome inactivation . On the other hand, something very frequent that occurs with clones are placental anomalies (the placenta does not form correctly during implantation of the embryo).
These can seriously compromise the viability of the embryo and even cause an interruption of embryonic development. If to all these problems we add the fact that the scientists in charge of the project intend to insert the nuclei of mammoth somatic cells into asian elephant oocytes , the project acquires new dimensions of complexity. Although this species is the closest to the mammoth from the phylogenetic point of view, it is an animal in serious danger of extinction.