Sunday, March 17, 2013

Resurrection - maybe not so far off?

As this item reports, there's considerable theorizing, and even some serious lab work, directed at  establishing the possibility of "de-extinction." DNA can be used as a tool to guide back-breeding of animals like the aurochs, which in the past had to be based on the looks of the animals, and the idea of reassembling a genome from whole or partial DNA samples and making a living mother able to carry a fetus to term is edging out of science fiction.  It's being done first with a frog, which is fairly easy.  There are many other candidates, but everyone's favorite is the mammoth.

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