The Associated Press reported that scientists in Wyoming, USA, cloned a black legged ferret using a DNA sample of an animal that died more than 30 years ago. The animal, named Elizabeth Ann, was born in December and is in excellent health.
Its predecessor was destroyed in 1988, during the heroic era of cloning, and caregivers froze it in the hope that with the development of DNA technology, extinct animal species would someday return. The black-legged ferret was on the verge of extinction. As cloning technology develops, researchers are working to bring back more and more animals that are endangered or already extinct, such as the Mongolian savage or the migratory pigeon, which went extinct in 1914. The final copy was stuffed so that a DNA sample could be obtained from them. Successful cloning of birds is actually more complicated than mammal cloning, but it is not impossible in principle. Perhaps most interesting is the fact that a few days ago, the successful sequencing of the oldest DNA sample to date was also announced in Stockholm.
It is a steppe mammoth and is at least a million years old.
The steppe mammoth itself is the ancestor of the woolly mammoth, which lives most in the public consciousness, and was one of its greatest snouts. The survival of such an ancient sample of DNA and its successful sequencing appears to be a matter of principle thus far, and the discovery remains at least twice as large as the oldest successfully analyzed sample to date, which came from a Pleistocene horse. It appeared in one of the most prestigious multidisciplinary magazines in the world, Nature a study Its author, Professor Love Dahlene, referring to the age of the sample, indicated that it dates back to pre-Homo sapiens. From here, of course, it is not surprising that our imagination begins, even if we do not envision a clone of dinosaurs, but perhaps a mammoth. By the way, something like this was recently tried in Japan, to no avail.
The current discovery may give new impetus to this as well. Nowadays, the reproduction of many animal species can be considered a routine task, such as domestic animals. It is even possible to make a special request for this, although at the moment it is still quite dysfunctional.
