They can be easily printed on coloured papers and used as cutouts for parties or regular home décor. "It's just a distraction.They can be used to create colouring books for kids or stencils for artists concentrating on elephant themed designs. Living animals versus fossils is really where our focus should be," said Gabriela Mastromonaco, senior director of wildlife science at the Toronto Zoo. We need to focus on the species here today. We're actually not going to be able to help any of them if we're thinking about the woolly mammoth. "There are so many species going extinct today. "Bringing that back as something that would somehow be portrayed as conservation would be a difficult sell on my part." "What I find troubling is bringing back some sort of a surrogate that is part- mammoth, part-elephant," said Joseph Bennett, an associate professor of biology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. While that may be true, others argue that using the cells to try to bring back mammoths is misguided. "It opens up new possibilities for conserving species' genetic diversity, preventing extinction and contributing to the sustainability of species," Ryder said. The cells can be used to study the biology, reproduction and health of elephants, he said. "It's a great advancement to have been able to accomplish this for elephants." "Producing induced pluripotent stems has proved to be very difficult for some species - notoriously the elephant," said Oliver Ryder, director of conservation genetics at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. Some scientists say the creation of the specialized elephant stem cells is a noteworthy scientific achievement. Reintroducing elephants with woolly mammoth traits could also help fight global warming by restoring ecosystems in ways that would help reduce the amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere, Church said. "These cells will benefit the elephant conservation community just as much as being engineered to bring back the woolly mammoth." "We're very, very excited that we have derived the first elephant induced pluripotent stem cells," said Eriona Hysolli, who heads Colossal's mammoth project. Researchers say the work will advance conservation Some people think it's a bad idea because it takes money away from conservation efforts, when in fact we're injecting money into conservation efforts."Ĭhurch said the woolly mammoth program could lead to new ways to protect endangered species like Asian elephants by expanding their habitat and helping scientists study the animals. "It's to have them fully socialized in large herds. "Some people think it's a bad idea because there will be only one lonely cold-adapted elephant. Science Scientists Say They Could Bring Back Woolly Mammoths. Like we want them to be resistant to the herpesvirus that is causing a huge fraction of infant elephants to die," Church said. "We don't necessarily need to bring back a perfect genome of a mammoth, because we want one that has certain things that mammoths didn't have. Scientists can now try to use cloning techniques and gene editing to manipulate the cells in the hopes of someday creating elephants with key traits of mammoths, such as their heavy coats and the layers of fat that enabled them to survive in cold climates. "This is kind of like asking Neil Armstrong if he plans to go to Mars - kind of misses the point he just landed on the moon on Apollo 11," Church said. The achievement is still far from the ultimate goal of creating herds of giant hairy beasts roaming in the wild again, but Church said it's a major step. A steppingstone from modern elephant to mammoth It hasn't been peer-reviewed, but the company says that's in progress. The company described the work in a scientific paper posted on the bioRxiv preprint server. And now the company says scientists have for the first time created induced pluripotent stem cells for the mammoth's closest living relative: Asian elephants.
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