The long-extinct woolly mammoth could be brought back to life within four years after a breakthrough in cloning technology by Japanese scientists.
Researchers have tried unsuccessfully in the past to recover nuclei in cells from the skin and muscle tissue of mammoths found frozen in permafrost, The (London) Daily Telegraph reported late Thursday.
The attempts failed because the cells were too damaged by the extreme cold.
However, a technique pioneered by Dr. Teruhiko Wakayama of the Riken Centre for Developmental Biology has succeeded in cloning a mouse from the cells of another, which had been frozen for 16 years.
Akira Iritani, a professor at Kyoto University, said the same technique could be used to resurrect the woolly mammoth, which died out about 5,000 years ago.
“Now the technical problems have been overcome, all we need is a good sample of soft tissue from a frozen mammoth,” he said.
The woolly mammoth would be conceived by inserting the nuclei into the egg cells of an African elephant, which will act as a surrogate mother.
Iritani said the first cloned woolly mammoth could be born in about four years.