We couldn't help but notice the headline in the British tabloid the Daily Mail the other day: "Woolly mammoths could come back to life and SAVE the Arctic: Harvard cloning scientist is using DNA from a 42,000-year old carcass to see the Ice Age species rise from the dead."
Especially because there's a scene in my new thriller Biohack where Henry Lee, Chief Scientist of Birthrights Unlimited, mentions the effort of scientists to bring back the mammoth, which went extinct in the last Ice Age.
The effort, which has captured the public's imagination with its parallels to Michael Crichton's resurrection of dinosaurs in "Jurassic Park," is being led by George Church of Harvard University.
From the Daily Mail's article:
Woolly mammoths could once again roam Arctic regions as part of an incredible plan to clone these vast beasts that disappeared 10,000 years ago.
Harvard University scientists - who are set to publish scientific papers in the coming weeks - are using DNA from a woolly mammoth that has been preserved in Siberian ice for more than 42,000 years.
If the two-year plan came to fruition, the woolly mammoths would live in a 20,000 hectare Ice Age safari park created by Russian scientists in a remote part of Siberia. ...
Their ambitious plan involves growing the creature within an artificial womb rather than recruiting a female elephant as a surrogate mother.
Researchers are using a genetic technique called CRISPR-Cas9.
The system allows the 'cut and paste' manipulation of strands of DNA with a precision not seen before.
Using this technique, scientists could cut and paste preserved mammoth DNA into Asian elephants to create and elephant-mammoth hybrid.
It's an audacious, captivating project — and one worth watching. Just don't expect any theme parks to be built up there in Siberia.