Frozen mice and Frozen Mammoths?
In Japan scientist were able to clone mice. This may not seem so exciting since we all know cloning is not a thing of the future anymore. But these cloned mice were different; they had been frozen for 16 years! Mouse cloning expert Teruhiko Wakayama was able to derive a technique to clone these mouse even though all of their cells had burst. His team used a nuclear technique. This technique involves taking an egg cell and removing its nucleus. The nucleus from the frozen animal is then put in. "Thus, nuclear transfer techniques could be used to 'resurrect' animals or maintain valuable genomic stocks from tissues frozen for prolonged periods without any cryopreservation," he wrote Sadly it should be stated that the hopes of possibly resurrecting Mammoths and Sabertooths is highly unlikely since there are no live cells of these mammals around anymore. Freezing an animal causes the cells the burst destroying the precious DNA. Using a chemicasl called cryoprotectants before the freezing can prevent this. Wakayama said that using brain cells worked best in these mice. They still aren’t sure why, since no living mice have been cloned by brain cells before. Is there a chance of bringing Ted Williams back with this latest technology? I guess time will tell.
In Japan scientist were able to clone mice. This may not seem so exciting since we all know cloning is not a thing of the future anymore. But these cloned mice were different; they had been frozen for 16 years! Mouse cloning expert Teruhiko Wakayama was able to derive a technique to clone these mouse even though all of their cells had burst. His team used a nuclear technique. This technique involves taking an egg cell and removing its nucleus. The nucleus from the frozen animal is then put in. "Thus, nuclear transfer techniques could be used to 'resurrect' animals or maintain valuable genomic stocks from tissues frozen for prolonged periods without any cryopreservation," he wrote Sadly it should be stated that the hopes of possibly resurrecting Mammoths and Sabertooths is highly unlikely since there are no live cells of these mammals around anymore. Freezing an animal causes the cells the burst destroying the precious DNA. Using a chemicasl called cryoprotectants before the freezing can prevent this. Wakayama said that using brain cells worked best in these mice. They still aren’t sure why, since no living mice have been cloned by brain cells before. Is there a chance of bringing Ted Williams back with this latest technology? I guess time will tell.
posted by PWH @ 4:52 PM
14 comments
14 Comments:
Very interesting article but i wonder why of all the cells in the body, brain cells are the best to use but haven't been used yet. Secondly, i wonder what the maximum amount of time would be to have a frozen cell and still have it produce a functional clone.
-Joanne Philippeaux
Interesting article, though other than the time frozen, why are mammoth cells different form mouse cells, if both had been frozen and their cells had burst what changed? maybe i missed that. Are these techniques being explored elsewhere, or is it still in the beginning stages?
Erica Damon
Wow, this article is intriguing. Did the article mention anything about a possibility of testing it with some other kind of organism, either be different mice, or a bigger animal, like a wolf or something. I'm curious to see whether a time restraint would be possible to find, or if it is not affected by the time that the body is frozen. Since when you freeze an animal, the DNA bursts when it occurs, would time even make a difference on it. Did they mention what cryoprotectants did in order to stop the cells from rupturing??
Katie Cole
so the mice were dead but some of the brain cells were still living?
Jennifer Smith(8)
Have they tried freezing any other animals and cloning them in this way? Also, I was wondering how the mice are frozen, yet their cells are still alive? It said that they can't d this with Mammoths because they don't have live cells so I wasn't sure how it worked.
-Tara Quist
Very fascinating article, however, I am not sure how the freezing cells were destroyed. Do you know? The nuclear technique is very interesting; it is very new technique to me.
So Jin Lee
Wow! It is so amazing that the frozen cells that burst still had a nucleus inside. I was curious as to why the scientist were able to find the nucleus in the mouse cells but not able to find anything usable from a Mammoth or Saber tooth. I have always found cloning experiments exciting but yet still disturbing.
-Carlos A. Varela
This is a very interesting topic. How many different types of cells did they use? It is amazing how they were frozen for 16 years. Do you know if they plan to continue these experiments with different animals?
Rob Lubenow
So from what I understand, this technique will probably only be useful in animals that are preserved using a cryoprotectant shortly after death. While this might not be useful in preserving already extinct animals, it may help to protect animals that are in danger of going extinct, such as pandas or tigers. Samples can be taken and properly preserved of these still living animals. Then, in the future if the need arises, the species may be able to be resurrected.
-Corinne Delisle
Is the team moving on to try this technique with any other frozen mammals? Were the mice exact replicas or did they find some problems with identical replication? How long had they been working on this project?
What do you think would happen if scientists tried to implant mammoth nuclei into the cells of a similar decedent animal, like an elephant or something? Would that work, or do the cells need to be the same? I guess it seems that the cells would be different, and code differently, so It might be a stretch, but it would be neat to see. I wonder how using cloned animals to restock endangered populations will effect the genes of the population in the long run. It seems that it is a form of inbreeding.. if you are breeding with yourself that is.
Rachel Carboni
Can scientists apply the same technique to other animals others than mice? Every animals have DNA that I think the techniques should not be so much different from one another. It will be interesting to see the research done on other frozen animals.
-Yi, Jeongsang
Really interesting! I'm not quite sure I get the differences between mice and mammals, and why only brain cells worked, what exactly do you mean?
-Cecelia Hunt
*UPDATE*
Thanks for all the interesting comments. I did a little bit more research and this nuclear technique hasn't been done with any other animals besides mice. It is fairly new, I believe that other labs will attempt to do similar experiements with different animals. They did use other cells besides brain cells, but they stated that the Brain cells worked the best. I know brain cells still baffle scientists because of their complex nature. The reason they can't use this technique at the moment to resurrect Mammoths is because we don't have any live Mammoth cells to implant the frozen nucleai into. In terms of the mice, frozen mice nucleus' were extracated and placed in live mouse DNA taken from modern mice. I hope this cleared up a little of the confusion
Mia DiFabbio (8)
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