Scientists have gone on multiple trips to Siberia and other
regions to try to excavate woolly mammoth DNA to use for cloning. However, trekking
miles from real roads and rappelling down permafrost cliffs has yet to result
in a complete sample for use usually because many samples are damaged from the
ice or other disturbances. Scientists in South Korea however are still holding
out hope for a true clone and continue expeditions searching for intact DNA. Knowing
that they may never find the complete sample that they need, a separate team of
scientists at Harvard University have recently began looking at creating a near-clone
woolly mammoth using an elephant template, given that the elephant is a very
close and living relative to the woolly mammoth. These scientists plan to use a
technique called DNA splicing to insert pieces of woolly mammoth DNA into the
elephant DNA by making individual changes to the genome as they discover them,
almost like piecing together a puzzle. A driving force behind the motivation for
cloning this extinct animal is to create hope for not only resurrection animals
of the past, but also to protect animals that are currently endangered with a type
of Plan B. Linked below is an article which discusses the ins and outs of this
woolly mammoth cloning endeavor.
Cloning has been controversial from the first mention of the
idea. Some people argue that it is “playing God” to manipulate genes to produce
an exact copy of something which was already created before. Especially in
regard to humans, cloning has undergone scrutiny in most communities due to the
unnatural rhythm of the whole thing. Is it more ethical to use cloning to bring
an animal back from the dead than it is to recreate a human? As soon as in the
next few years, we might fight out people’s answer to this question.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/07/woolly-mammoths-extinction-cloning-genetics/
I am particularly interested in the idea of resurrecting extinct animals and what implications this has for our current animal populations. For animals that went extinct as long ago as the woolly mammoth, I cannot help but wonder if nature was just running its course. If you set the issue of cloning aside, this has some serious ethical considerations for the wellbeing of the woolly mammoth. Say we were able to clone a woolly mammoth and restore the species, would they be confined to a zoo? If we were to release these animals into the wild how would we endanger other species, or would the woolly mammoth even survive to begin with? These questions, paired with the reality of our warming climate, make me wonder if bringing such a species back would have more negative than positive effects.
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ReplyDeleteBoth you and Kat have brought up interesting criticism about the resurrection of the woolly mammoth and the preference of organisms with a certain cool factor. Perhaps the woolly mammoth could survive a modern climate and diet, but any introduction into the wild may be a significant ecological disruption that dangerously destroys the current balance in the Siberian tundra.
ReplyDeleteWhat if, however, we could use this technique to fill a significant environmental niche that was removed by human behavior? To quote the article below, "the Passenger Pigeon was THE ecosystem engineer of eastern North American forests for tens of thousands of years, shaping the patchwork habitat dynamics that eastern ecosystems rely on, ecosystems now losing diversity without the Passenger Pigeon’s engineering role." The Passenger pigeon was a generalist, having first been seen in the Ice Age and surviving until the industrial age. Their large numbers were responsible for canopy thinning, understory disturbance, and the species was a key organism in the promotion of diversity and bioabundance.
The species only went extinct in 1914 CE, which is relatively recent compared to mammoths that went extinct in 1650 BCE, meaning that enough time has passed to reveal its ecological significance and it does not seem that another species has adopted their role. At the very least, its revival would have no significant effect on the environment, especially if its large populations could not be reestablished, but at best the ecological niche it filled can once again be restored, stabilizing North American environments and aiding in wilderness recovery.
Some may argue that Nature and the planet will adapt - that a different form of Nature does not always mean bad. I'm not aware of any animal absolutely critical to the existence of Nature or the Earth, so both will continue with or without various species and the environment will shift until an equilibrium is achieved. I partly share this view, as environmental pressure defines the niches that need to be filled or can collapse a niche and life must always progress whether or not humans take moral responsibility to take an active role in that process. However, I fear that without our involvement certain change can happen too quickly and detrimentally destabilize the environment we rely upon to survive.
So while I share your concern for the feasibility and the ethical questions surrounding the resurrection of an animal that may no longer survive today, I think it's worth discussing the restoration of species recently wiped out by humans, and at the very least the animals that were environmentally significant.
http://reviverestore.org/the-passenger-pigeon-the-ecosystem-engineer-of-eastern-north-american-forests/