by Teigan Muller, Junior
Imagine you saw a woolly mammoth walk across your front lawn. That may not be as far-fetched as one might think. Scientists genetically altered mice and made woolly mice. These mice have attributes similar to those of the woolly mammoths in the past.
Some people may ask, “Why do scientists want to bring back an extinct animal that lived in severely cold weather?” The short answer is that scientists believe that woolly mammoths can help slow down climate change. They claim that woolly mammoths will tamp down the arctic permafrost to stop the release of methane gas into the atmosphere.
The woolly mouse has shaggy, long, tan fur. The fur can help the mice survive in freezing cold temperatures as the woolly mammoth did back in the Ice Age. Scientists Ben Lamm and George Church are currently testing to make sure that the mammoths can withstand our current temperatures as climate change has drastically changed the climate since the Ice Age.
But some others have different opinions on this claim. Paul Ehrlich and Karl Flessa say we should not bring the mammoths back because of the very slight chance that they could help with climate change. They believe that the mammoths can also be bad for the climate because of the mammoth’s feces. The amount of feces the mammoths produce would also produce a large amount of methane gas into the atmosphere. So, adding mammoths back into the environment could have dire consequences
Another problem some genetic engineers have pointed out is how the mammoth would thrive in this current state of the world. Genetic engineers say that adding past species back into the environment can be extremely risky. How would the mammoth be with human contact, what would the mammoth eat, and how would other animals react and live around this large animal? There are unlimited questions that can be asked about this scenario. What if the mammoths did not help with climate change; what would be their purpose then? But in other circumstances what if they did help with climate change, but the mammoths could not reproduce? Then what would scientists do? This is a very risky experiment that needs extensive research to hopefully succeed.
Scientists decided to work with mice because mice are a lot easier to work with than bigger animals like elephants. So instead of testing on animals closer to mammoths, they decided to genetically alter a mouse. The mice have almost exactly the same fur as a woolly mammoth would. The mouse gene was altered with an ancient mammoth gene variant that affects keratin. Keratin is a protein found in mammals’ hair and nails. This was inserted into the mice to alter their hair texture. Scientists also targeted lipid metabolism, which affects the way fat is stored and broken down to help the mice withstand freezing temperatures.
Some say that the fact they were able to put ancient DNA into current living animals is impressive enough. They say gene editing has a low success rate because the animals typically kill the surrogate animals or their offspring. Scientists still need to extensively experiment to make sure these large mammals will have a good impact on the environment before bringing back these extinct animals. People will just have to wait and see what happens in the future.
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