Scientists want to work with a biotech company to create hybrids from elephants and mammoths. To do this, they create embryos in the laboratory that carry mammoth DNA.
Boston – Around four thousand years after the woolly mammoth became extinct, scientists have made an incredible advance. As reported by several media outlets, the researchers want to breed elephant-mammoth hybrids and bring them back to the arctic tundra. The first calves are expected in six years. The project is to be financed with 15 million dollars (the equivalent of around 12.7 million euros) from the company “Colossal”, which specializes in genetic research.
“Our goal is to breed a cold-resistant elephant that will look and act like a mammoth,” George Church, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, told The Guardian. “Not because we want to trick anyone, but because we want something that is functionally equivalent to the mammoth, that enjoys its time at minus 40 degrees and does all the things that elephants and mammoths do, especially cut down trees,” says Church . Together with the technology entrepreneur Ben Lamm, head of the biotech company Colossal, Church initiated the project.
Mammoth from the laboratory: This is how a test tube baby is created
What sounds like it came out of a science fiction film will soon be implemented in the project: It is the declared goal of Lamm and Church to create embryos in the laboratory that carry mammoth DNA. The aim is to take the DNA from a mummified mammoth baby and mix it with the DNA of an Asian elephant. This would create an embryo that is either inserted into a cow elephant or grown artificially. The test tube mammoth contains genes that are responsible for the thick hair, the insulating layers of fat and other adaptations to the cold climate.
With their unusual project, the researchers want to help preserve the Asian elephants – and at the same time equip them with mammoth DNA. This enables the animals to live in large parts of the Arctic. The researchers also hope that the “comeback of the mammoth” will result in the animals having a positive impact on damaged habitats. They believe that the elephant-mammoth hybrids are helping to restore the former arctic grasslands – for example, by cutting down trees, which is supposed to keep the ground cool. This is how the animals could help us fight the climate crisis, the researchers argue. Only recently gold diggers found gigantic mammoth skeletons in Canada (BW24 * reported).
Mammoths from the laboratory: critics still skeptical
Other scientists are quite critical of the fact that the mammoths produced in the laboratory would actually make a contribution to overcoming the climate crisis. “In my opinion, the reasons given – the idea that the arctic environment could be restored with the help of a mammoth herd – are implausible,” said Victoria Herridge, an evolutionary biologist of the Natural History Museum, to The Guardian .
Gareth Phoenix, Professor of Plant Ecology and Global Change at the University of Sheffield, said: “Mammoths are being proposed as a solution to stop the thawing of permafrost in the Arctic – because they remove trees, trample the ground and compacting and converting landscapes into grassland. ”This can help to keep the soil cool. “However, we know that in the forested regions of the Arctic, trees and moss cover are critical to protecting permafrost, so removing the trees and trampling the moss would be the last thing to do.”
Mammoths: Contrary to what many people think, they are not the ancestors of the elephants
Mammoths are an extinct genus of elephants. They originated in the transition from the Miocene to the Pliocene in Africa and colonized Europe as well as Asia and North America in the period that followed. The mammoth belongs to the elephant genus, but is not a direct ancestor of today’s elephants. According to morphological comparisons, the mammoth is more closely related to the Asian elephant than to the African. Visitors to Wilhelma in Stuttgart * will soon be able to admire Asian elephants in the new, globally unique “Elephant World” *, the construction of which is currently in full swing. The Wilhelma in Stuttgart * is the only zoological-botanical garden in Germany. * BW24 is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.
List of rubric lists: © Holger Neuhäuser / dpa
