Bringing Extinct animals back by cloning
In response to the question posed by SunSeven, "The Possibilities Of Bringing Extinct Animal Or Bird Species back To Life Using The Technology Of Cloning" brings forth an interesting topic.The technology is there for basic cloning. For example, scientist are in the process of cloning a wooly mammoth. It has been talked about for years, and the deciphering of the genome has helped progress this forward. Dolly the sheep was successfully cloned already. Currently, scientist have successfully cloned sheep, goats, cows, mice, pigs, cats, rabbits, and a gaur, as reported by ORNL. Wikippedia has a larger list of cloned animals. So yes, we can clone some types of animals.
Bringing an extinct species back is a dream of many. To be able to repopulate the world with animals that are extinct, or endangered would be an interesting site. The biggest hurdle they face in cloning extinct animals is preservation of intact DNA. The whole strand needs to be intact for cloning to have a chance, then a host body needs to be found. A wooly mammoth can be hosted in an elephant it is believed.
Another lesser discussed issue of cloning, is there would be a large amount of animals with nearly, if not identical, DNA. this could lead to disease or other reproductive complications.
The Technology is there, the understand of DNA is there, clones have been successful, it is in my opinion a matter of time before the wooly mammoth is on display in the washington Zoo.
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