Previous efforts in the 1990s to recover nuclei in cells from the skin and muscle tissue from mammoths found in the Siberian permafrost failed because they had been too badly damaged by the extreme cold.
But a technique pioneered in 2008 by Dr. Teruhiko Wakayama, of the Riken Centre for Developmental Biology, was successful in cloning a mouse from the cells of another mouse that had been frozen for 16 years.
Now that hurdle has been overcome, Akira Iritani, a professor at Kyoto University, is reactivating his campaign to resurrect the species that died out 5,000 years ago.
"Now the technical problems have been overcome, all we need is a good sample of soft tissue from a frozen mammoth," he told The Daily Telegraph.
He intends to use Dr Wakayama's technique to identify the nuclei of viable mammoth cells before extracting the healthy ones.
The nuclei will then be inserted into the egg cells of an African elephant, which will act as the surrogate mother for the mammoth.
Professor Iritani said he estimates that another two years will be needed before the elephant can be impregnated, followed by the approximately 600-day gestation period.
He has announced plans to travel to Siberia in the summer to search for mammoths in the permafrost and to recover a sample of skin or tissue that can be as small as 3cm square. If he is unsuccessful, the professor said, he will ask Russian scientists to provide a sample from one of their finds.
"The success rate in the cloning of cattle was poor until recently but now stands at about 30 per cent," he said. "I think we have a reasonable chance of success and a healthy mammoth could be born in four or five years."
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Timing is everything.
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The Solar Maximum will ruin technology, and then a bunch of crap involving a mass panic by the addicts cause the 'end of the world'.
Also think of of the arguably very sad circumstances which the first said animal would have to endure. Fame is not necessarily fun.
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Scientifically, it's fascinating. But otherwise useless.
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Aside from the technical achievements that I assume will be made by the project, it also offers a chance to question ideas and concepts that are generally considered definitive - such as extinction.
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If you check out the bell curve, you can see that Ted Nugent and Neanderthals are neck and neck at the far reaches of the left end.
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Or "pet mammoths" just like the Hollywood stars... or Tony Blair was George Bush's "lap mammoth".
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