Jurassic Park, the Sequel

Just dont clone George W Bush (shudder)

Ned

But I assume they were still putting the nuclei into egg-cells of living surrogates? That seems to be the key. At least the way I learned it, the nuclei doesn't seem to have all the information necessary to create an organism. The rest of the egg cell is critical, and the species of course have to match. So they can make clones of living species, and they might even be able to use an elephant as surrogate for a mammoth, but I doubt either an ostrich or a crocodile could foster a dinosaur.

I feel this goes against human nature to clone animals, people, or any living organism for that matter.

From Ned Potter--

Hello, Jock. Yes, as I understand it, you're right that living cells were used as hosts. There is mitochondrial DNA, among other components, that was not transferred. But the expectation--until now--was that the DNA from a dead cell would decay very quickly. Which makes this intriguing.

Cool! Bring back the woolly mammoth and sabertooth tiger.

o rite and i think it is very interesting that the japanese have discovered a way to re-animate or clone the dead or fossilized.

maybe they can bring back Mao Zedong.

I think this is wonderfull. Just think, this technology could possibly lead to bringing back extinct animals that may have the missing components or clues to cure cancer, aids etc.

jock59801 why do you feel as this is against human nature?
is bring back history plus this could be a key benifit is clone live stock to make our food chain allot better.
I support cloning, if you have something perfect why not replicate it?

Mao was not Japanese. He was Korean.

Number one resurrected animal should be Tasmanian tiger (from 1930s), not some prehistoric animals like mammoth.

i want a wooly mamith for
a pet

"So they can make clones of living species, and they might even be able to use an elephant as surrogate for a mammoth, but I doubt either an ostrich or a crocodile could foster a dinosaur.
"

The odds of getting enough intact dinosaur DNA to act as a template for a chimera (ala Jurassic Park) is not promising.

But as a technique for preserving endangered species and reviving more recently extinct species, it has promise.

But megafauna preserved by glaciation? It might be technically possible, it would excite the popular imagination, but a living mammoth would be a curiosity, a creature that could never live free in the wild without major disruptions to the modern ecosystem.

On the other hand, if somebody manages to bring back the housecat-sized ancestors of modern horses, they are going to make a bundle in the pet market. "Why yes, honey, you CAN have a pony"!

Mao is chinese with korean ancestors and japanese blood flowing through his veins descended from the Khans.......nice!

This is amazing discovery, but has to be restricted obviously. Pros and Cons are all over on this subject. We are created in the imagae of God if you belive in that, therefore, as time goes on, no one knows where our brains will take us. Again with Restriction!!!

Isn't Ted Williams still frozen somewhere? Could this process possibly be used to clone humans in the same manner? Ethics aside of course.

What is human nature?
I think it's made up, so kinda hard to go against it.....

While this is great for cloning, I think it would be highly iresponsible to clone anything that has gone extinct. It would be cool to see these creatures alive, but they'd spend their entire lives as exhibits. They'd never be able to be reintroduced into the wild, as other animals, have evolved to take their place, and to survive better than they have.

"Could this process possibly be used to clone humans in the same manner?"

While there's no reason why it couldn't be, there's also little incentive to do so. Humans are strongly shaped by their education and socialization; there may be genetic limits on what you are physically or mentally capable of, but your genes don't determine your destiny. You could clone Ted Williams, and the result would look like Ted Williams, but he would probably end up being an accountant.

If there comes a point in the future where we can read, record and implant thoughts and memories from brain to brain with an extremely high degree of fidelity, then human cloning becomes a path to immortality. Then again, by that point we may well have the capacity to design human bodies to specification.

Whether it will ever be possible to retrieve thoughts and memories intact from cryogenically frozen humans (all of whom have been declared legally dead) is undetermined.

But that's all pure science-fiction at this point. We're making strides at understanding how the brain stores memory and what determines personality, but there is a long way to go before we can "scan" this stuff and transfer it to a clone body (or if you prefer, an android one).

On the issue of extinct animals living in today's world, every single one has special circumstances. The Carilina Parakeet could very well thrive in it's native range today, provided we don't have someone with a gun hiding behind every bush. As far as mammoths, there's a "Pleistocene Park " in Russia that is currently providing habitat to revenant critters from that age, such as tigers, tarpan, and others in the works. Mammoths have been speculated over.
Thylacines (Tasmanian wolf) would be a welcome sight to many in it's former native range, though sheep farmers might not like sharing space with them. Wolves have returned to the some of the lower 48, you may recall. I think there are far more limiting factors at this point, to resurrecting the extinct, than "where would they live?".

Elizabeth
The Japanese do intend to try it on a mammoth. I think that this was part of devoloping a technique.