On Tuesday, the team behind the plan announced to bring mammoth -like animals back to the Tundra the creation of what the Wooly Mice calls, who have a long fur reminiscent of the woolly mammoth. The long fur was created by the simultaneous adaptation of no fewer than seven genes, all with a well -known connection with hair growth, color and/or texture.
But don't think this is a kind of mouse mammeth hybrid. Most genetic changes were first identified in mice, no mammoths. So the focus is on the fact that the team could simultaneously do multiple genes-IS that they must be able to do to get a considerable number of mammoth-like changes in the elephant genoma.
From mice and mammoths
The Colossal Biosciences team has started a number of vast projects, including the Dodo and Thylacin, but the flagship project is the Mammoet. In all these cases, the plan is to take stem cells of a closely related species that is not extinct, and to edit a series of changes based on the corresponding taken of the deceased species. In the case of the Mammoet, that means the elephant.
But the elephant forms a large number of challenges, such as the concept paper that describes the new mice. “The 22 -month pregnancy period of elephants and their extensive reproductive timeline make a rapid experimental assessment impractical,” the researchers acknowledge. “Furthermore, ethical considerations with regard to the experimental manipulation of elephants, an endangered species with complex social structures and high cognitive capacities, alternative approaches to functional tests require.”
So they turned into a species that has been used for genetic experiments for more than a century: the mouse. We can do all kinds of genetic manipulations in mice and have ways to use embryonic stem cells to pass on those manipulations to a new generation of mice.
The mouse also has a very considerable advantage for testing purposes: mutations that change its fur are easy to recognize. In the century-plus that we used mice for research, people noticed and observed a huge variety of mutations that influence their fur, that change color, texture and length. In many of these cases, the changes in the DNA that cause these changes have been identified.
