Scientists activate ancient mammoth cells

There has been talk of bringing mammoths back to life for quite some time now. Some scientists limit their ambitions to genetically modifying elephants, while others try to revive the cells of an animal that died thousands of years ago.

In 2010, a well-preserved mammoth body was discovered in the Russian Far East. According to researchers, the body belonged to an animal that died 28 thousand years ago. It’s worth noting that all this time the remains were frozen, meaning that most of the tissues stayed intact.

Scientists have managed to extract 88 whole cells, and Japanese biologists from Kindai University have even tried to revive them.

To carry out the procedure, the cell structures were injected into rodent egg cells, where they became active but did not start splitting.

To the researchers’ dismay, this means that resurrecting mammoths at the current level of development of cloning is impossible. Biologists are currently working on developing a mechanism that will allow them to bring cells into the splitting stage, which would then resurrect the ancient mammal.

But it would be a mistake to write this off as yet another failed experiment, since scientists used to have trouble reviving even much younger cells.

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