An international team of scientists has decoded most of the genome of the woolly mammoth, an important step toward bringing the ice-age giant back to life.
The DNA was extracted from the wiry, reddish-brown hair of mammoths that had been frozen in the Siberian permafrost for more 20,000 years.
It is by the far the most complete genome of an extinct animal ever sequenced.
Pennsylvania State University's Stephan Schuster, lead author of a paper published in Thursday's edition of the British journal Nature, estimates the mammoth genome is now about 80 per cent complete. It is far bigger than he expected, more than 50 per cent larger than the human genome.
“It is not only a big animal, but a big genome,” said Dr. Schuster, with the Center for Comparative Genomics and Bioinformatics at Penn State.
He said the work would not have been possible without the co-operation of a team sequencing the genetic code of the African elephant, a modern relative of the woolly mammoth, which also has a huge genome.
The researchers have begun a more detailed comparison of the two genetic codes. Their goal: to understand the 40,000 genetic changes that made mammoths so different from their modern cousins.
A detailed comparison is an important step toward bringing the ice-age elephants back from the dead, Dr. Schuster said. Using a variety of methods to manipulate DNA, they could reintroduce those changes into the elephant genome. More...
