Word: mammoth
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Nature may have forgotten about the extinct woolly mammoth, but science has been buzzing about it lately, ever since researchers announced that they had sequenced 80% of its genome. That gave rise to chatter about whether a cloned mammoth could ever be born. Serious cloning science began in 1952, when researchers first reported transferring a tadpole nucleus into an ovum and producing identical tadpole copies. In 1995, biologist Craig Venter sequenced the genome of the Haemophilus influenzae bacterium, the first living organism whose genes were decoded. In 1997, cloning made stop-the-presses headlines when embryologist Ian Wilmut announced that...
Rattled Americans have found some solace in the news that President-elect Barack Obama is working quickly with congressional Democrats to finalize details of a mammoth stimulus package expected to total between $500 billion and $700 billion. Europeans have been less lucky. So far, they've had to content themselves with a patchwork of national recovery plans frequently at odds with one another. A European Union-wide program, if leaders can even agree on one, is likely to be worth a comparatively anemic $130 billion...
...scientists from Penn State University announced that they had succeeded in piecing together the majority of the woolly mammoth's genome, bringing the world one step closer to the Jurassic Park fantasy of using recovered DNA to bring an extinct species back to a shaggy, lumbering existence...
...wonders of eBay allowed the scientists to purchase a $130 bag of 20,000-year-old woolly-mammoth hair from a vendor in Moscow, and the wonders of science allowed them to extract the mammoth's genetic information in the most successful attempt to date to sequence an extinct animal's DNA. DNA in general breaks down after 60,000 years or so, making the possibility of a real Jurassic Park scenario - complete with flying pterodons and bloodthirsty tyrannosaurs - remote. Still, scientists see the completion of the genome as the first step to uncovering and understanding the reasons behind...
...genetic sequencing of the woolly mammoth, meanwhile, raises the similarly fraught but increasingly realistic possibility of cloning extinct animals, a process that Jurassic Park director Steven Spielberg has called "the science of eventuality." Still, scientist Stephan Schuster, who led the team at Penn State, isn't holding his breath. "What I'm trying to say is that there is a workable route to do that, but it is at this time technically, and cost-wise and time-wise, not feasible." Guess we'll just have to wait for Jurassic Park...