Researchers inserted the mammoth nuclei into mouse ova where they saw “signs of biological activities.”
Japanese and Russian scientists have woken up cells from a woolly mammoth that roamed the Earth 28,000 years ago. The team inserted muscle cell nuclei from a well preserved mammoth carcass into mouse ova, where they watched “signs of biological activity” taking place—a milestone they say will provide a platform to better understand extinct animal species.
In the latest study, published in Scientific Reports, researchers recovered cell nuclei from some of the less damaged remains of Yuka. Previously, the same team had tried to use nuclear transfer to spark activity in 15,000-year-old mammoth cells to no success, “possibly owing to the technological limitations at that time and the inappropriate state of the frozen mammoth tissues,” they wrote. However, the better state of preservation of Yuka meant another attempt at the experiment was successful.
These structures were then inserted into mouse oocytes—the cell in the ovary that can divide to form an ovum. The researchers then watched what happened using a live-cell imaging technique.“The mammoth nuclei showed the spindle assembly, histone incorporation and partial nuclear formation; however, the full activation of nuclei for cleavage was not confirmed,” they wrote.
“The results presented here clearly show us again the de facto impossibility to clone the mammoth by current NT [nuclear transfer] technology, our approach paves the way for evaluating the biological activities of nuclei in extinct animal species,” they concluded.
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