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Jihadin wrote:Actually...Russia have wide ranges of land for...where the mammoth may roam...antalopes may play...eerr..whatever...Think of the money that would bring in from the tourist.

And it would be an ecological disaster!

Russia not a disaster already?

Not ecologically, no need to add more fuel to the fire!

I believe the Russians have already set aside a large section of land somewhere in Siberia to function as a reserve for them.


And let us not forget when talking about 'damage to the ecosystem and whatnot', they're mammoths. It's not like they're hard to find and eliminate should we decide it was a mistake after all. Crops pollinate uncontrollably, insects can be missed in extermination efforts. But mammoths? They're just a bit too noticeable. If we decide they are an issue at any point, elimination will not be a problem.

money talks though. I see Wooly Mammoth Parks in Russia. Eventually they buy out Vietnam and then we have Jurassic Park

So how long before we get a jurassic park?

Castiel wrote:Speaking from a purely ecological point of view, cloning the mammoth and releasing it to live in the wild would be an awful idea. There is a reason they died, and they have no place in todays ecosystems, and could very well lead to more extinctions by outcompeteing todays organisms, and by removing those animals from the food chain any animals that feed upon them would also be affected. Wild mammoths = bad idea.

Nobody is talking about doing anything like this. We are talking about cloning one in captivity so we can study it. We can't make a herd of them without getting a herd worth of individual DNA. A couple clones cannot make a population, the offspring would be disfigured.

Things like the White Rhino though, that are on the way out due to humans, is where this science could, and possibly should, be applied.

Cloning cannot create genetic diversity. Creating an actual population still requires a way to overcome the population bottleneck. To use cloning to help the white rhino, you'd need thousands of distinct genetic samples. When a species gets sufficiently small, it becomes virtually impossible to achieve an expanding population. It's sort of like a mathematical population event horizon.

Hey I once saw a documentary (based on a scientific journal) about that place, I heard it went badly wrong and some people got killed. I'm surprised it wasn't in the news.

Castiel wrote:

Jihadin wrote:Actually...Russia have wide ranges of land for...where the mammoth may roam...antalopes may play...eerr..whatever...Think of the money that would bring in from the tourist.

And it would be an ecological disaster!

Unless we cloned thousands of genetically distinct individuals, they would still die out after a generation or two without very much ecological impact.

Rented Tritium wrote:

Castiel wrote:Speaking from a purely ecological point of view, cloning the mammoth and releasing it to live in the wild would be an awful idea. There is a reason they died, and they have no place in todays ecosystems, and could very well lead to more extinctions by outcompeteing todays organisms, and by removing those animals from the food chain any animals that feed upon them would also be affected. Wild mammoths = bad idea.

Nobody is talking about doing anything like this. We are talking about cloning one in captivity so we can study it. We can't make a herd of them without getting a herd worth of individual DNA. A couple clones cannot make a population, the offspring would be disfigured.

Yeah, I'm aware, I was more refering to the possibility, probably should have made that clearer!

Things like the White Rhino though, that are on the way out due to humans, is where this science could, and possibly should, be applied.

Cloning cannot create genetic diversity. Creating an actual population still requires a way to overcome the population bottleneck. To use cloning to help the white rhino, you'd need thousands of distinct genetic samples. When a species gets sufficiently small, it becomes virtually impossible to achieve an expanding population. It's sort of like a mathematical population event horizon.

Again I'm aware of this, I don't personally know how much stored White rhino DNA we have. If it was possible to clone a hundred different individuals or more it would probably be worthwhile though!

Yeah, I mean sometimes you get lucky and the bottleneck is smallish. The bison famously recovered from a bottleneck of 750.

I suspect 100 is a bit low for the rhino, though.

Just keep cloning them. they will come....with money...to finance more cloning

Cursory googling shows that the white rhino minimum viable population has been estimated as low as 1000 and as high as 8000. Doesn't look like cloning would help much there unless someone has a rhino gene vault somewhere.

Then we splice their DNA with another rhino DNA.

Jihadin wrote:Then we splice their DNA with another rhino DNA.

Yeah but then we're not saving the white rhino anymore.

It would be like "saving" the polar bears by cloning grolar bears.

Rented Tritium wrote:

Jihadin wrote:Then we splice their DNA with another rhino DNA.

Yeah but then we're not saving the white rhino anymore.

It would be like "saving" the polar bears by cloning grolar bears.

I think he meant with other white rhino DNA to make custom White rhinos.

no glue involved at all

Castiel wrote:

Rented Tritium wrote:

Jihadin wrote:Then we splice their DNA with another rhino DNA.

Yeah but then we're not saving the white rhino anymore.

It would be like "saving" the polar bears by cloning grolar bears.

I think he meant with other white rhino DNA to make custom White rhinos.

That process is built into recovering from a population bottleneck, though. Basically what you are gaining is efficiency, but not that much.

So assuming the white rhino has the best MVP of 1000, custom matching unique gene combinations rather than leaving it up to mating might let us get away with having 500. And we're talking about a genetic feat like nothing we've ever accomplished. It would be a serious nobel prize contender and it would STILL require around 500 viable instances of white rhino DNA and 1000 living cloned rhinos as well as a safe place for them to live.

And once you've done that, the poachers will show right back up and kill some of them. Square one. The rudimentary problem that killed the white rhino has not been solved.

We can class the poachers as terrorist.

An important thing to remember is that if you take 500 dna sequances and rearrange them into 1000, you still have 500 individuals worth of genetic variety, so you still actually have not overcome the problem which creates the population bottleneck in the first place.

Castiel wrote:

Rented Tritium wrote:

Jihadin wrote:Then we splice their DNA with another rhino DNA.

Yeah but then we're not saving the white rhino anymore.

It would be like "saving" the polar bears by cloning grolar bears.

I think he meant with other white rhino DNA to make custom White rhinos.

Ultimately though you're dealing with a limited genepool. There must be many alleles for various genes that are lost and however much you mix up what you have you're playing with a limited variety of material.

Also, splicing genomes together to make new assortments of your limited genepool isn't as easy as it sounds. Firstly, you don't know which parts of the genome do what. Also, genetic modification imports small fragments, single genes and gene clusters, not large chunks of the genome.

Building custom genomes from a bank of material will probably be possible in the future, it isn't at the moment.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Jihadin wrote:We can class the poachers as terrorist.

I knew someone who worked in reserves in Zimbabwe where the poachers come to kill the rhino for their horn. The poachers are armed to the teeth and kill people who try to stop them. The park wardens are similarly tooled up and they've had proper gun battles. The park wardens had various things, commonly AK47s but my friend had a Webley service revolver and their truck had a bren gun.

It'll be a good training tool to get us to that point

Howard A Treesong wrote:

Castiel wrote:

Rented Tritium wrote:

Jihadin wrote:Then we splice their DNA with another rhino DNA.

Yeah but then we're not saving the white rhino anymore.

It would be like "saving" the polar bears by cloning grolar bears.

I think he meant with other white rhino DNA to make custom White rhinos.

Ultimately though you're dealing with a limited genepool. There must be many alleles for various genes that are lost and however much you mix up what you have you're playing with a limited variety of material.

Also, splicing genomes together to make new assortments of your limited genepool isn't as easy as it sounds. Firstly, you don't know which parts of the genome do what. Also, genetic modification imports small fragments, single genes and gene clusters, not large chunks of the genome.

Building custom genomes from a bank of material will probably be possible in the future, it isn't at the moment.

Your preaching to the choir here lads. I know that we (probably, I don't have any figure on frozen rhino DNA to make a definate statment) don't have the variation left to resurrect the species. I was just clarifying what Jihadin meant.

My main point was that just because we can clone a mammoth doesn't mean we should.

Castiel wrote:My main point was that just because we can clone a mammoth doesn't mean we should.

While true, it also doesn't mean we shouldn't.

It's not like it'll come out fully formed and rampaging.

Russia though seems determined. They pull it off then that be something worth while to see.Though religion on our side would disagree they probaly start to wonder what else the russians are going to clone. Of course quite a few brainiacs on our side would venture across into Russia to learn and help with the cloning. Its going to happen.

Rented Tritium wrote:

Castiel wrote:My main point was that just because we can clone a mammoth doesn't mean we should.

While true, it also doesn't mean we shouldn't.

It's not like it'll come out fully formed and rampaging.

I'm not worried about the rampaging. I was more thinking that the species has been dead for thousands of years, and has no place in the modern world. Also, what will you do with the mammoths you clone? They are herd animals, and they would require a substantial amount of space. The world couldn't have more than a few hundred in zoos.

Castiel wrote:

Rented Tritium wrote:

Castiel wrote:My main point was that just because we can clone a mammoth doesn't mean we should.

While true, it also doesn't mean we shouldn't.

It's not like it'll come out fully formed and rampaging.

I'm not worried about the rampaging. I was more thinking that the species has been dead for thousands of years, and has no place in the modern world. Also, what will you do with the mammoths you clone? They are herd animals, and they would require a substantial amount of space. The world couldn't have more than a few hundred in zoos.

You're going to keep it in a preserve setting just like we do with elephants right now. I'm sure there are hundreds of facilities that would LEAP at the chance to house this research.

Rented Tritium wrote:

Castiel wrote:

Rented Tritium wrote:

Castiel wrote:My main point was that just because we can clone a mammoth doesn't mean we should.

While true, it also doesn't mean we shouldn't.

It's not like it'll come out fully formed and rampaging.

I'm not worried about the rampaging. I was more thinking that the species has been dead for thousands of years, and has no place in the modern world. Also, what will you do with the mammoths you clone? They are herd animals, and they would require a substantial amount of space. The world couldn't have more than a few hundred in zoos.

You're going to keep it in a preserve setting just like we do with elephants right now. I'm sure there are hundreds of facilities that would LEAP at the chance to house this research.

I suppose so. Still, not my cup of tea though. Like I said, its been gone for thousands of years, and I think (personally) that it should stay that way. It would be interesting for sure, but I'm not sure I want it to happen.

Cool! Maybe we'll get sabertooth tigers too. Then we can sell them to breeders to be domesticated, and in a couple hundred years, we'll have little sabertooths running around like strays

And WoW well get a new lease on life