StemCell Therapy

A research lab led by controversial cloning pioneer Hwang Woo-Suk said it would attempt to implant DNA from the extinct mammal into an elephant egg cell to create a new embryo.

They hope it will lead to the birth of a new baby mammoth for the first time since the prehistoric giants last roamed the earth 10,000 years ago.

Sooam Biotech Research Foundation said today it had signed a deal with Russia's North-Eastern Federal University to cooperate on the project.

Scientists will attempt to "restore" cells taken from mammoth remains that were entombed in ice until they were recently uncovered by the thawing permafrost.

First they must find well-preserved tissues with undamaged genes, such as bone marrow. The next step is to replace the nucleus of an Indian elephant egg cell with the mammoth DNA.

If all goes to plan, test tube embryos will be implanted in an elephant's womb and the first woolly mammoth would be born 22 months later.

Sooam researcher Hwang In-Sung said: "The first and hardest mission is to restore mammoth cells.

"This will be a really tough job, but we believe it is possible because our institute is good at cloning animals."

The lab has successfully cloned living animals including a cow, a cat, dogs, a pig and a wolf, but using ancient DNA from a long-extinct species has never been done.

Hwang Woo-Suk, who created the world's first cloned dog Snuppy in 2005, was a national hero in South Korea until some of his research into creating human stem cells was found in 2006 to have been faked.

Read more here:
Woolly mammoths 'will be brought back to life' by cloning

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