Genome Hacking Could Reverse-Engineer Extinct Woolly Mammoth

November 20, 2008

It might not make sense to pull woolly mammoths from the Ice Age into an age of global warming, but resurrecting that lost species just became a bit less far-fetched.

Using hair from 20,000-year-old specimens preserved in Siberian tundra, an international team of scientists finished a draft genome sequence of Mammuthus primigenius.

About one-fifth of the genome remains unidentified, but that should take just a few more years and scans. Once complete, it could be a template for would-be mammoth makers.

"It may one day become possible," said Pennsylvania State University biochemist and study co-author Stephan Schuster, "to mammoth-ify an African or Asian elephant genome."

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