why dont scientists extract DNA from frozen mammals in the antarctic and clone them??????

Answer 1

Check out these websites:

http://web.owu.edu/news/2001/mastodon.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3075381.stm

Answer 2

Someday they may be able to that. The DNA needs to be intact though (this would be highly unlikely) or at least sufficient to repackage it so that it could be introduced into an ovule.

The biggest problem is that we generally use receptor cells from the same species, and we really don't have any way of knowing what nutrients and proteins must be present in the receptor cell for mammals from the antarctic in order for a successful clone to differentiate.

It *is* possible that the technology will someday be worked out enough to have a close enough receptor cell and worked out genome for the mammal in which the DNA could be extracted and repackaged with the appropriate proteins to actually do this, but it is a LONG LONG way off. Not likely in our lifetime.

Answer 3

Well mammals don't come from the Antarctic!

The best extinct mammal specimens come from woolly mammoths from the Tundra permafrost.

It is possible that woolly mammoth DNA might one day be cloned into the egg of an Asian elephant. As some of the mammoth specimens are very well preserved then I am sure someone will try, although I suspect that mammalian cloning techniques are not yet sufficiently good to experiment with such difficult samples.

Answer 4

Because in order to clone you need a "live" cellular nucleus and a "live" host cell for a Higher animal such as a mammal. You cannot clone dead or extinct animals. "Jurassic Park" is purely fictional and there is no possibility of it occuring in higher animals. Bacteria have a natural competence to transform by picking up stray DNA in a medium, but other animals such as fungi and yeast require artificial transformation done by scientists. The problems are mammals are much more complex, because they support asexual and sexual reproduction and humans have both Nuclear DNA and mitochondrial DNA.

Answer 5

They can't since the success rate of cloning is only about 3%. So that means they would needs several hundred eggs with the injected DNA to guarantee 1-2 viable animals. Speaking of eggs, those would need to be from the same species so that makes cloning extinct animals relatively impossible.

Answer 6

They are working on that. There was a publicized case last year involving a woolly mammoth.

They need good, living, viable DNA. Difficult to find in something that has been dead and buried for 20000 years.

I think if they are ever successful at finding viable DNA they will try to clone it.

Answer 7

Animals frozen 10,000 years ago have not been kept in ideal conditions. The DNA is too damaged to think about cloning even though useful sequences can be extracted.

Answer 8

Put basically - the source material is corrupted.

It's like trying to make a CD-quality copy of some music recorded on a hand-hewn wooden 12" record which has been kept above a boiler for thirty years.

Answer 9

Don`t be surprised if they haven`t already. I remember watching a tv program a few years ago discussing cloning dna from a woolly mammoth with a closely related elephant. ( it was an rare Indian elephant, i think it was larger than the normal ones) but it was a while back, and my memory's a bit hazy.

Answer 10

Because this is real life, not Jurassic park! You need more than DNA to fully replicate an animal. Technology is not this advanced yet.