Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!cory.Berkeley.EDU!jyamato
From: jyamato@cory.Berkeley.EDU (YAMATO JON AYAO)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Mammoth clones
Message-ID: <4786@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 31 Jul 88 17:20:27 GMT
References: <201200013@prism> <1364@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> <2887@calmasd.GE.COM>
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU
Reply-To: jyamato@cory.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (YAMATO JON AYAO)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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In article <2887@calmasd.GE.COM> jnp@calmasd.GE.COM (John Pantone) writes:

>I'm sure I read recently (within the last year or so) about just such
>an effort being done in Siberia - except that instead of trying to
>actually clone the mammoth, they took DNA and did a recombinant number
>on elephant DNA - to "clone a hybrid" to coin (clone?) a phrase :-)

>Anyone else hear/read about this - what was the result?
>John M. Pantone @ GE/Calma R&D, 9805 Scranton Rd., San Diego, CA 92121
>...{ucbvax|decvax}!sdcsvax!calmasd!jnp   jnp@calmasd.GE.COM   GEnie: J.PANTONE

I don't know about this one, but two gene sequences were isolated from
the hide of a preserved museum quagga (a recently extinct zebra-like
animal) by similar techniques.  However, with maybe 500,000 genes in
a higher organism (plus all the non-DNA information in the cell) this
is a long way from being able to reconsititute the quagga...

The new Polymerase Chain Reaction DNA-amplification method is supposed
to be powerful enough to produce useful quantities of DNA from a single
hair, so this kind of trick may become more common in the future.  The
limiting problem, I think, is fragmentation of the DNA--if your sample
does not contain at least one intact copy of the desired gene you're
out of luck.  Also, PCR requires that you know what you're looking
for.

   Mary Kuhner