Wooly Mammoth Revival

Deep or Shallow?

How?

• Mammoths acted similarly to modern elephants in Africa
• New advances in allele replacement and genome editing (CRISPR) allow for modifications to elephant DNA to recreate Mammoths.

Blood oxygen release at low temperatures

Why?

Subcutaneous fat for insulation and fasting

• Tundra and Taiga were once grasslands known as "Mammoth steppe"
• When the herds disappeared, the grassland transitioned to tundra
• Without grass to insulate, permafrost is melting and releasing greenhouse gases
• Melting all permafrost in the world is equivalent to burning all the world's forests 2.5 times.

Thick hair to protect from the elements

Wooly Mammoth Revival

Parties Involved

• Revive and Restore - "Genetic rescue for endangered and extinct species"
• The Harvard Wooly Mammoth Revival Team

Project Goals

"The ultimate goal of woolly mammoth revival is to produce new mammoths that are capable of repopulating the vast tracts of tundra and boreal forest in Eurasia and North America. The goal is not to make perfect copies of extinct woolly mammoths, but to focus on the mammoth adaptations needed for Asian elephants to live in the cold climate of the tundra."

Preface

What makes something deep as opposed to shallow?

Completed Steps

• The Harvard Team is currently using the CRISPR to copy/paste DNA from the mammoth genome into living elephant cell cultures
• Mutations for mammoth hemoglobin, fat, and hair development have been engineered into these cells