Mammoth effort to clone ice-age beast

By CHARLES ARTHUR

Scientists hoping to clone prehistoric woolly mammoths are preparing their first frozen DNA samples in a bid to revive the species.

The specimens of bone marrow, muscle and skin were unearthed last year in the Siberian tundra where they had been preserved in ice for thousands of years.

Researchers at the Gifu Science and Technology Centre and Kinki University want to use the genetic material in the cells to clone a woolly mammoth, said Dr Akira Irytani, a scientist at Kinki University in western Japan.

First they must check whether the five specimens airlifted from Russia are really from mammoths, then decide whether the DNA locked inside is preserved well enough to self-replicate. After that, it could take several years to produce an animal. "There are many different problems to overcome," said the Gifu Centre's Hideyoshi Ichibashi. "I think we can move ahead only one step at a time."

The idea of cloning mammoths holds a fascination for scientists since the cloning of adult mammals was shown to be feasible with Dolly the sheep in 1996.

But in 1999 Alexei Tikhonov, the chairman of the mammoth committee of the Russian Academy of Science who took part in an expedition that uncovered one of the buried animals, said he and his academy colleagues were not preparing to clone the mammal.

"You have to have a living cell for cloning, and not a single cell can survive in the permafrost," he said then.

Irytani said the idea was to develop the cloning technology on extinct animals to aid in the preservation of endangered species.

Six animals thought to be mammoths have been partially or completely unearthed from permafrost, which is as hard as concrete and has to be broken up with jackhammers.

Kinki University scientists and veterinary experts from Japan's Kagoshima University have searched for mammoth DNA samples since 1997 in Siberia. The techniques used include ground-penetrating radar, which can detect the size and shape of buried objects.

So far, no cells bearing cloning-quality DNA have been found.

The initial plan was to find mammoth sperm cells, which could be used to inseminate an elephant to create a mammoth-elephant hybrid. But no sperm cells have been found, and other samples retrieved have been rendered unusable by time and climate changes.

Irytani was more hopeful about their samples, estimated to be 20,000 years old, saying they had been well preserved at a temperature of about -20C.

- INDEPENDENT