Can scientists bring back extinct species? It seems like they very well might, now that scientists in Canada have recovered DNA from the bones of a preserved woolly mammoth and have used it to make a living blood protein, according to a CBC article that appeared in the journal Nature Genetics.
Led by biologist Kevin Campbell of the University of Manitoba, the scientists first extracted the DNA for hemoglobin, a blood protein that carries oxygen, from the bones of three mammoths they discovered in the permafrost. They converted this hemoglobin into RNA, which is used to create proteins, and then inserted that RNA into E. coli bacteria. These bacteria thus turned this RNA into the hemoglobin of a living woolly mammoth.
A key reason for this research is that the scientists were interested in discovering how the mammoths survived in the extremely cold conditions of the Arctic, since the ancestor of both mammoths and elephants originally developed in Africa, which had a tropical climate. But the mammoths headed north about 2 million years ago, and hemoglobin has difficulty releasing the oxygen it carries when the temperature is very low. So the scientists were interested in discovering how these mammoths could survive in such a cold environment by looking at their hemoglobin and comparing it to that of modern-day elephants. Through this comparison, they found that there were three chemical changes making it possible for oxygen to be transported to cells at low temperatures.
Their discovery has major implications for the future, beyond just understanding how mammoths survived in the cold. For one thing, this technology might be used to turn the DNA for hemoglobin of any extinct animal into RNA and then into the hemoglobin of a living version of that extinct animal.
But why stop at hemoglobin? If it is possible to use DNA to recreate hemoglobin, maybe it would be possible to convert the DNA that creates other parts of the body for not only the mammoth, but for other extinct species for which paleontologists have discovered bones. Then, if that possibility exists for other body parts and other extinct species, maybe with further development, it might be possible to use the DNA to create egg and sperm cells, and then combine these cells to conceive a baby for an extinct species. Or alternatively, maybe scientists could use cloning technology to create a baby.
The possibilities are endless. Using this ancient DNA, scientists might have the power to bring back previously extinct species, and perhaps these species might thrive in a protected environment. Just think. There could be research parks or zoos devoted to working with these formerly extinct animals to learn more about them, as well as displaying them to an interested public. It would be as if the 1993 film Jurassic Park based on Michael Crichton’s 1990 sci-fi novel has turned from a sci-fi thriller into real life, in which the extinct can come back to life. If it is possible to bring back long- extinct species, perhaps this technology could be used to bring back the recently extinct, so that endangered species have a new way to live forever.
In short, this ability to create a protein for a living woolly mammoth might be just the beginning as scientists go on to create other proteins from the bones of other extinct animals and eventually recreate formerly extinct animals. It would, in effect, be a way to go back into our distant past by bringing back the dead, so they are now among the living. It would also be a great theme for a series of sci-fi films about the return of the living dead—except now it’s no longer science fiction. It has become the science of today.
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