Molecular Genetics

(submitted by AB) Imagine a world where pigeons and squirrels frolic about campus. The occasional feral cat dashing across west mall. Rove herds of woolly mammoths grazing around the MLK statue…

It seems that the genome of the extinct mammoth has been sequenced. This will allow scientists to compare the sequences with modern elephants to study differences that might shed light on their origins and their demise.
Several new techniques were employed including isolating the DNA from only the hair of mammoth mummies. In doing this, contaminating DNA from bacteria and fungi can easily be eliminated. The hair follicles serve to protect the DNA also.

It may be possible clone portions of the mammoth’s DNA and swap it in to elephant DNA using homologous recombination. With successive generations, we could repopulate Sarahpalinia with mammoths to support the hunting tourism industry. Molecular genetics at its best.

…there would no longer be a need for humans. The last barrier to opening cat food tins would drop and humans would be reduced to warm spots.
(submitted by TK) Scientists have recently identified an enhancer that appears to affect the expression of a gene that controls the formation of the joint between the wrist and the thumb. One of the more important aspects of this discovery is that it is not a gene itself, but part of the regulatory region of several genes. This could affect the timing of when a gene is expressed; ultimately changing the orientation of the structure.
Additionally, this type of study highlights the importance of the unknown in the human genome. Long described as junk DNA, these intergenic regions may very well prove to be the primary distinguishing sequences between humans and their closest primate relatives (Chimpanzees, Bonobos, people from Arkansas…).

(submitted by SS) Until now, scientists have only been able to produce clones using cells from live animals. This is how researchers created Dolly the Sheep, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult animal.

Researchers had thought that frozen cells were unusable because ice crystals would have damaged the DNA. That belief would rule out the possibility of resurrecting extinct animals from their frozen remains.

Recently, scientists in Japan have generated clones from frozen mice. Mice that have been dead and frozen for 16 years. This opens the possibility of cloning mammoths and other animals that long disappeared from the extant fauna of the Earth. Jurassic Park is one step closer…