Success With Frozen Mice Gives Scientists Hope of Cloning Extinct Animals

Posted on November 7, 2008

CNN reports that scientists in Japan were able to produce mice clones from the cells of dead mice that had been frozen for sixteen years. The findings give scientists hope that they may someday be able to produce a living clone of extinct species that died thousands of years ago - such as a wooly mammoth.

Researchers had thought that frozen cells were unusable because ice crystals would have damaged the DNA. That belief would rule out the possibility of resurrecting extinct animals from their frozen remains.
But the latest research -- published in the journal, Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences -- shows that scientists may have overcome the obstacle.
Researchers at the Riken Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan, used cells from mice that had been frozen for 16 years at -20 Celsius (-4 degrees Fahrenheit).
They extracted the nucleus and injected it into eggs whose DNA had been removed. Several steps later, the scientists were able to clone the mice.

It's too early to say if this will lead to some scientists creating the kind of incredible park filled with dangerous predators that Michael Crichton wrote about in Jurassic Park - as Geekologie discusses. It's probably going to be the Mammoth that scientists try to bring back first - and there is already at least one group of scientists that plans to do so.