Animal species from millions of years ago have been critical towards preserving harmony within Earth’s ecosystem. It has been the ample population and evolution of humans that have brought such species such as the woolly Mammoth to their extinction.
Although in the case of the woolly mammoth, it was sadly mother nature that brought the species to extinction. Rainfall was the cause of the woolly mammoth’s extinction, through the shifts to plants. The change occurred so fast that they could not adjust and evolve to prevail.
Their reintegration into the ecosystem could help stop the current climate catastrophe.
In fact, the species had wandered so much around the planet in the look for an appropriate habitat that they had actually circled Earth twice. Nature simply didn’t want them on the planet any longer, but as we know, nature does not obey any rules. What is in dire need of concentration is humanity’s vast struggles to actually bring the species back to life.
The species went extinct about 4,000 years ago after roaming the earth for 5 million years. Based on its extended existence on Earth and within antique history, it had a huge effect on the ecosystem and so does our globe now without their presence, but negatively.
De-extinction of Ancient Species
For the past ten years, Professor George Church from the Harvard Medical School has been exploring how to bring ancient species back to life by extracting their genes and fusing them into their evolved species. In this case, our modern-time elephant is the evolved species of the woolly mammoth. As stated by Professor Church, this procedure had been successfully performed before:
“We’re trying to de-extinct genes. The field has actually already done this with two genes that confer cold-resistant properties to organisms. The idea is to safely introduce these and other genes into present-day elephants so the elephants can comfortably live in and restore Arctic environments,” Professor George Church said.
He added, “All elephant species are endangered. We’re trying to give them new land in the Arctic that’s far away from humans, who are the major culprits causing extinction.”
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Over $15 million had been already extended for this experimentation in the hopes that it will fix our environmental issues. The bioscience and genetic company known as Colossal had been working closely with Professor Church to create gene editing, the process that allows the reincarnation of this species’ biological engineering.
The Science behind it
You may ask, how does this whole process actually work? Well, it is not as complicated as experts make it sound. Gene Editing is taking nuclei from one species and replacing and replacing them with nuclei from another species which will alter certain biological abilities.
Professor George Church said, “It’s a similar kind of ambitious, engineering-focused, team-based target that President Kennedy set when he declared we would put a person on the moon within a decade.”
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