While restoring dinosaurs from preserved mosquitoes remains as scientifically implausible as it was when the hit science fiction film Jurassic Park was made in 1993, the possibility of cloning the linkurl:woolly mammoth;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/53656/ and other extinct species just became a little bit more real. In this week's linkurl:__PNAS,__;http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/10/31/0806166105.abstract?sid=8020fedf-69de-453f-920a-53f897766c73 researchers report "resurrecting" a mouse frozen for 16 years via nuclear cell transfer. "It is a major breakthrough" said Pasqualino Loi a biomedical researcher from Teramo University in Italy, who was not involved in the study. "There is hot debate on going," wrote Loi in an Email, "on the possibility to 'restore' extinct mammals, with the [woolly] mammoth in pole position." "If you had asked me five years ago" whether such a feat were possible, said Peter Mombaerts a molecular neurogeneticist Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt, who was not involved in the study, "I would have said 'no way.'" Standard nuclear...

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of

Receive full access to more than 35 years of archives, as well as TS Digest, digital editions of The Scientist, feature stories, and much more!