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Published online 19 November 2008 |
Nature
456,
310-314
(2008)
| doi:10.1038/456310a
Updated online: 7 January 2009
News Feature
Darwin 200: Let's make a mammoth
Evolution assumes that extinction is forever. Maybe not. Henry Nicholls asks what it would take to bring the woolly mammoth back from the dead.
In 1990 the late Michael Crichton gave the idea of reviving extinct species a slickly plausible and enormously entertaining workout in his novel Jurassic Park. At that time the longest genome that had ever been sequenced was that of a virus.
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Your article was very intriguing and enormously entertaining, as good as a Michael Crichton sequel. Perhaps the biggest hurdle really is that there is no more room for the species that are here on Earth today. Human activities (modern agriculture practices, urban development, resource extraction, etc.) are encroaching on wildlife habitat all over the globe making it nearly impossible for current-day African elephants and Asian elephants and all their ecosystem fauna and flora co-inhabitants to survive in reserves of adequate size. As amazing as it would be to see a living mammoth, as you also say in your article, where indeed would we find to place these large-habitat requiring creatures where they would not be displacing a native animal or where they would not over-graze some native plant ecosystem? But it still stirs the imagination in all of us who read Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World" as children. L. Saul-Gershenz, Conservation Scientist, SaveNature.Org
Minimally Invasive Supra-massive Surgery Minimally Invasive Supra-massive Surgery is a strong possibility. This piece meticulously describes many of the steps necessary to ?recreate? an extinct mammoth from ancient DNA. Although many of the molecular techniques of DNA extraction and cellular manipulation are considered in great detail, the prospect of laparoscopic (key hole) surgical egg collection are readily dismissed. A complex alternative solution is proposed where ovarian tissue from recently deceased elephants could be transplanted into immune suppressed mice, where the elephant eggs may potentially be matured and harvested if the inter-species differences could be fully overcome. Laparoscopic surgical egg collection in elephants is identified here as difficult on the grounds that their lack of a pleural space would lead to cardiopulmonary complications following abdominal gas insufflation; a technique which provides operating space and anatomical visualisation. There is however no comprehensive evidence to rule out minimally-invasive surgery for elephants, and these procedures are not necessarily ?out of the question? as is stated in the article. In the first instance laparoscopy can be performed without inflating the abdomen, using the non-gaseous mechanical ?abdominal wall lift technique? to attain the operative dimensions required for surgery (see V. Paolucci et al. Surg Endosc 9, 497-500; 1995). This method reduces the pressure effect of gas in the abdomen and its consequences on the adjacent thorax, thereby decreasing the potential for cardiopulmonary complications. Moreover, the role of gas-dependent laparoscopy may still be a possibility for elephants, as the gas pressure required to expand their abdomens for surgery is likely to be less than the approximate 150mmHg of trans-diaphragmatic pressure that they regularly undergo during times of underwater snorkelling, where they do not suffer from any respiratory difficulties (see J. B. West Respir Physiol 126, 1?8; 2001). Furthermore, there are the emerging technologies of robotic assisted procedures and NOTES (Natural Orifice Transluminal Endoscopic Surgery) which could negate the need for external laparoscopic instrumentation. Mankind?s innate ability to innovate novel technologies can on occasion be more advanced than its proficiency to predict the consequences of their application. If we are successful in producing a live mammoth, then we shall have to consider it within the context of the numerous other species that are currently finding themselves on the verge of extinction, amongst which include some of the world?s current elephant populations.