Cloning a mammoth: an optimist's opinion

7 questions to Semyon Grigoriev, head of the museum

Andrey Konstantinov, "Russian Reporter" No. 22-2013

Last week, a frozen carcass of an adult female mammoth was found on the island of Maly Lyakhovsky. After this discovery, the extinct animal may still be cloned and a live mammoth will be born.

Semyon Grigoriev, Head of the Lazarev Mammoth Museum of the Institute of Applied Ecology of the North of the Northeastern Federal University, tells about the prospects of such a project

1. What is so special about this find? After all, not the first mammoth is found…Over the past five years, four more or less whole carcasses have been found in Siberia, three of them in Yakutia, which is not for nothing called the homeland of hairy elephants.

The uniqueness of the latest find is that for the first time we unearthed an adult female mammoth, at the time of her death she was about 60 years old. Although the upper part of the trunk and head were eaten to the bone by predators, the lower part, which lay in the ice, was preserved unprecedentedly well. We even found a trunk, this is the second instance of an adult mammoth trunk available in the world. In addition, there are wonderful ivory tusks of 17 kilograms each.

2. Is the trunk and tusks the most important thing?The whole world was struck not by the exceptional safety of the mammoth, especially not by gender and age, but by the presence of liquid blood that flowed from the holes we made in the ice below the belly.

3. Do I understand correctly that this makes it possible to seriously talk about cloning a mammoth?A new mammoth find at Maly Lyakhovsky can supplement our knowledge about mammoths at the genetic and molecular level.

Perhaps it will finally be possible to decipher the complete nuclear genome of the woolly mammoth, compare it with the DNA of the nearest living relative — the Indian elephant and, of course, try to find living cells. The main condition for successful cloning of a mammoth is a high—quality biological source material.

4. And who will do it?According to the project "The Revival of the Mammoth", our Northeastern Federal University is working with the South Korean Foundation for Biotechnological Research Sooam, whose head, Professor Hwang Woo Suk, is one of the world leaders in the field of animal cloning.

5. When will the project start?In September last year, NEFU signed a scientific cooperation agreement with Sooam, according to which the Korean side undertakes to fully equip a joint laboratory for the study of cellular structures and the genome of fossil animals by July this year at its own expense.

So I think that the first studies of samples of the new mammoth will take place in Russia, in Yakutsk.

6. The idea of reviving an extinct animal seems fantastic. How realistic is this?No one has cloned an extinct animal yet.

There are no working methods yet, but the most important obstacle may be the quality of the source material. No matter what we say about the super-preservation of soft tissues, the past thousands of years, in my opinion, should still have consequences at the molecular and genetic level. We are at the beginning of a long journey called "Mammoth Cloning".

7. Do you believe that you will succeed?Less than six months have passed since the signing of the agreement with the Koreans, as the best preserved mammoth for all the time of research appeared.

We arrived at the excavation site exactly on May 9, Victory Day. I believe that all this is not accidental and everything should work out for us.

Mammoths: a history of findsMiddle Ages.

• Mammoth bones were mistaken for the remains of extinct giants or for the relics of the "dog-headed" Saint Christopher.
• 1692. Amsterdam Mayor Witsen described the discovery of a mammoth in Yakutia. Since then, about 80% of all finds have been made in this region.
• 1799. In the Lena River delta hunter Shumakhov found almost a whole carcass of a large mammoth with wool.
• 1806. For the first time in the world, a mammoth skeleton was mounted and placed in the Kunstkamera in St. Petersburg.
• 1828. Mammoth has received an international scientific name — Mammuthus. This is a tracing paper from the Russian word, which presumably comes from the Mansi "mang ont" — "earthen horn".
• 1900. The Berezovsky mammoth was found — a perfectly preserved specimen of an adult male woolly mammoth in permafrost.
• 1977. In the Magadan region, workers dug up a mammoth Dima. He became very popular not only in the scientific community: the cartoon "Mom for a baby Mammoth" was filmed, a monument to Dima was erected in Yakutsk.
• 1993. The journal Nature has published information about the discovery on Wrangel Island of the remains of mammoths that lived only a few thousand years ago, during the construction of the Egyptian pyramids and Mycenaean civilization.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru06.06.2013