Science & Technology

Mammoth resurrection is now one step closer

By T.K. Randall
March 12, 2019

Image: AI-generated (Bing AI / Dall-E 3) Back in 2010, bone marrow and muscle tissue were retrieved from the 28,000-year-old remains of a young mammoth found in a remarkable state of preservation in the Siberian permafrost.

Since then, scientists have been attempting to use these samples to achieve the seemingly impossible task of bringing back - for the first time - a species that has been extinct for thousands of years.

Most recently, scientists at Kindai University in Osaka, Japan have reported the first major step towards this goal by not only confirming the authenticity of the samples, but also observing signs of biological activity after injecting mammoth muscle cell nuclei in to mouse egg cells.This activity reportedly included a type of structural formation that precedes cell division.

Study co-author Kei Miyamoto described the breakthrough as a "significant step towards bringing mammoths back from the dead" but noted that there was "still a long way to go."

"We want to move our study forward to the stage of cell division," he said.

Source: Telegraph

Tags: Mammoth, DNA