DNA of Ice Age's Woolly Mammoth's Mapped

Nov. 19, 2008 -- Scientists for the first time have unraveled much of the genetic code of an extinct animal, the ice age's woolly mammoth, and with it they are thawing Jurassic Park dreams.

Their groundbreaking achievement has them contemplating a once unimaginable future when certain prehistoric species might one day be resurrected.

"It could be done. The question is, just because we might be able to do it one day, should we do it?" asked Stephan Schuster, the Penn State University biochemistry professor and co-author of the new research. "I would be surprised to see if it would take more than 10 or 20 years to do it."

The million-dollar project is a first rough draft, detailing the more than 3 billion DNA building blocks of the mammoth, according to the study published in Thursday's journal Nature. It's about 80 percent finished. But that's enough to give scientists new clues on the timing of evolution and the deadly intricacies of extinction.

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The project relied on mammoth hair found frozen in the Siberian permafrost, instead of bone, giving biologists a new method to dig into ancient DNA. Think of it as CSI Siberia, said Schuster. That different technique -- along with soaring improvements in genome sequencing and the still embryonic field of synthetic biology -- are inspiring scientists to envision a science-fiction-like future.

Crucial to the mammoth mapping are about 20 hairballs. Past efforts to use ancient DNA were hampered because bacteria, viruses and parasites crept into the bone fossils during the millenia-old degradation process, making much of the found genetic material something other than what scientists study. For example, current efforts to study Neanderthal DNA have been complicated because only about 6 percent of the recovered genetic material actually belonged to our ancient cousins.

Schuster says that it should be possible to someday recreate any extinct creature "within the last 100,000 years" as long as it got trapped in permafrost and had hair. But that leaves out the Jurassic Period, the time of dinosaurs.

So Earth's real-life sequel to extinction is far more likely to be Ice Age 3 than Jurassic Park IV.