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The perfectly preserved remains of a baby horse belonging to a species now extinct have made the headlines when they were unveiled to the world last week. Russian and South Korean researchers say the 40,000-year-old colt found in Siberian permafrost could find life again. If successful, the achievement would mark an important step toward the ultimate goal of resuscitating the woolly mammoth.
The 40,000-year-old horse was found buried under 30 meters of permafrost, which preserved it so well that its tail, mane and hooves were still attached.
According to Semyon Grigoriev, head of the Mammoth Museum in Yakutsk, the foal only had 20 days when he perished. But thanks to the amazing conservation power of permafrost from the "Mouth of Hell" – the crater of a kilometer long tadpole-shaped where the horse was found, originally created by the Soviets when 39 they cleared the forest of the region – researchers were able to recover muscle tissue from the animal.
These undamaged samples could prove extremely useful for biotechnology research, including a project to resuscitate Equus lenesia, also known as Lena horse.
Hwang Woo Suk flew out of Seoul, South Korea, to personally oversee the foal's DNA extraction process. If they find viable and intact cells, these could be used to clone this unique animal.
"We are trying to make a primary culture using this baby horse," said Suk, a former professor at the Seoul National University. "If we get living cells from this ancient little horse, it's a wonderful promise for people in terms of cloning."
Suk is a pioneer in stem cell research, who has fallen out of favor in the scientific community after being found guilty of falsifying some of his findings. He admitted to using paid donor eggs in a study claiming to recover stem cells from a cloned human embryo. Bringing a dead species back from the dead can be a way for the scientist to redeem himself.
Credit: Michil Yakovlev / SVFU.
Previously, South Korean researchers had obtained live cells from a dead dog, frozen by its owners. This was an important achievement because the water crystallizes and destroys the cells.
Just as they could clone any other animal, scientists plan to transplant genetic information from a specialized cell into an unfertilized egg whose genetic information has been destroyed or physically eliminated. The horse of a kind of horse similar to the extinct Lena will be used as a substitute.
Once they have enough confidence in their abilities, scientists plan to do the same for a woolly mammoth with an elephant as a substitute.
Most of the woolly mammoths of the world were killed about 10,500 years ago, the main causes still to be debated. Hunting, climate change or both have been identified by scientists as the main suspects. But on a small island off the coast of Alaska, an isolated population of woolly mammoths has persisted for thousands of years. They also died around 5 600 years ago and with them, all their species has disappeared.
In 2014, a team of international researchers discovered a 43,000-year-old woman from the Siberian tundra whose muscles, kidneys and even blood were well preserved.
However, the differences between a mammoth and an elephant are much greater than those between a modern horse and the extinct lena.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
As such, the cloning of Lena's horse would be a huge breakthrough for scientists seeking to bring back species of the dead. There is a lot of ground to cover, and right now people are probing in the dark. For example, no one has been able to recover a living cell in old tissue – which is the current plan. It would be unique in itself.
Previously, scientists led by George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard University, merged the DNA of elephants and mammoths, another milestone for the cloning of extinct animals. Although DNA can survive for a long time under the "freezer", it is far from perfect – it is impractical for cloning because many fragments have been damaged by the environment. That is why the researchers had to replenish mammoth DNA with bits of the elephant.
In addition to woolly mammoths and Lena's horse, scientists would like to resuscitate dozens of other extinct species such as the saber-toothed cat, Dodo or Quagga.
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