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This is not to discourage you in thinking that we will never be able to clone recently extinct animals such as mammoths, but we still need to do plenty of research and develop new techniques before we are likely to be successful. As scientists do more work with in vitro fertilization and gene replacement theory, maybe the day will come when our grandchildren will be able to see a living mammoth at their local zoo.
If scientists are able to clone an extinct animal using frozen sperm, this may open the door to other cloning techniques. The skins of some recently extinct animals are preserved in museums. It might be possible to extract somatic cells (non-reproductive body cells) from these preserved skins, re-hydrate them, and use the recovered DNA to replace the nuclear DNA (the DNA found in the nucleus of the cell) in an egg of an extant (still living) relative. This is the technique that was used to clone Dolly the sheep.
In my next article, "Cloning Extinct Animals II" I will be discussing specific difficulties related to the cloning of dinosaurs.
For more information about genetics, be sure to read the June 2001 issue of Natural History--The Many Genomed Self.
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