Scientists successfully clone mouse from frozen cell

by Rich Bowden - Nov 9 2008, 20:27

Japanese scientists have successfully cloned a mouse from a cell that had been part of an animal frozen for sixteen years.

Photo: Woolly Mammoth. Credit: rpongsaj/Flickr

Researchers at the Japanese government-backed institute, the Riken Centre for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan, were able to clone a cell from the mouse which had been frozen at minus 20 degrees Celsius, bringing new hope to the possibility of bringing back previously extinct animals such as the woolly mammoth.Researchers said they planted the cell nucleus from the frozen mouse into one that was alive, which led to the birth of the cloned mouse."The newly developed technology of nucleus transfer greatly improved the possibility of reviving extinct animals," the team led by Teruhiko Wakayama said.
"Even though reviving extinct animals is often described in films and novels, such as in Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, it had in reality been impossible," they said.Scientists have said it is only a matter of time before preserved specimens of extinct creatures present themselves for attempts at cloning. The dead mouse had been frozen at approximately the same temperature as frozen ground."I have high hopes that we will be able to find a fine sample. It's said that there are more than 10,000 mammoths lying underneath Siberia," said Akira Iritani, a mammoth expert at Kinki University in Osaka, as reported by the New Straits Times.

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OludareNov 10th, 2008 - 07:21:24

I am highly interested in scientific research and inventions that can better the lot of mankind but, I still wonder what exactly, mankind has to gain from incursions into the re-creation of species that have gone extinct long before man came out of his caves?

This prehistoric animals have been said to either be super-predators or herbivores with extra-large appetites. With the increasing loss of natural forests and vegetation all around the world, what we need now is hardly the revival of a species that would only accelerate the global environmental degradation.

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Scientists successfully clone mouse from frozen cell

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