In the late 1970s, a young graduate of the geophysical faculty of Vladivostok University named Serhiy Zimov impressed the Soviet authorities and received sufficient funds to establish a scientific station somewhere in the Far East, more precisely in Yakutia.

Serhiy went there for a reason. By the 1980s, he had become the first researcher in the world to write a specialized study drawing the attention of the scientific community to the dangers of methane emissions from the permafrost of Siberia. But who will hear him then?

Pleistocene, megafauna, steppe

There was no mention of global warming, let alone the thawing of Siberia. Well, during that period too, Zimov had a revolutionary idea… Pleistocene park.

Very briefly, as we now write in long strokes, this Sergey said that the disappearance of fauna and megafauna in the Pleistocene is one of the factors in the acceleration of global warming.

As it turned out, the ancestral homeland of animals in the past was the steppe. As the animals were hunted to near extinction, the steppe began to be replaced by forests. When there was no one to trample the shoots, destroy the trees, the million-year-old steppe turned into a semi-forested tundra. And this accelerated the process of warming the soil.

If the animals of the past were to return, says Zimov, the forests would disappear, the steppe would return, and the earth would freeze much harder, without seasonal thaws. By default, methane will stay where it is.

Only the communist bloc collapsed, the funds went to waste, all his colleagues left, and Serhiy was left alone to deal with this project. Please, in the meantime, his son Nikita, who will take over the leadership of the Research Institute, also appeared.

Russian, Korean and Japanese researchers started cloning mammoths about 5-6 years ago

Only the two of them, father and son, managed to bring to the Pleistocene Park animals that Yakutia had not seen for more than 30,000 years: sheep, camels, bison, sheep, Kalmyk cattle, etc. Old Zimov’s big dream, before he takes his last breath, is to see mammoths walking around

Hello! This idea of ​​Zimov’s took root and others. Russian, Korean and Japanese researchers started cloning mammoths about 5-6 years ago. Tsar Putin even offered them about $5 million to get started. Like now, they didn’t make a hiss. Meanwhile, others intervened. And we want to talk about them.

Dallas-based Colossal Biosciences was founded last year by Harvard geneticist George Church and businessman Ben Lamm. Their purpose? Clone mammoths. For this, they raised funds in the amount of about 60 million dollars. Most from private sources.

Less than a year later, these two guys announced that they were starting another job, namely cloning the Tasmanian tiger, another extinct species, but a little later. For this, they pulled another 65 million dollars from the market. And they also explained how cloning will be carried out. Let’s start with mammoths.

First, they will take genetic information from mammoths, because their genome has already been deciphered. They will then either inseminate a female Asian elephant with this material or use an artificial uterus that they will also create.

History poorly sewn with white threads

The first mammoth should be ready sometime after 2027, Church and Lamm say. Then, since only one mammoth does not spring, others will, they will mate and reach the herds that will populate Siberia and Alaska. You have already understood, people picked up on Zimov’s idea and said that they were going to send him some things, even though they didn’t.

The problem is that the story of the two is poorly sewn together with white threads, and people have been kind of silent when asked how they will overcome some of the obstacles that others are also stuck in. Frankly, we will tell you from the beginning that mammoths cannot be brought back to life. Goodbye guys!

They are dead and buried in permafrost, they are pots and pans, they lived their lives, they ate their food. The same with other extinct species. Why can’t they be brought back to life? For the simple fact that there are no longer two viable parents. This is how mammals work.

This deciphered genome is not completely complete. The probability that certain key sequences are missing from the genetic material used for cloning is enormous. There is no way to get rid of germ cells. In frozen form, sperm does not last very long. Not to mention 30-40 thousand years.

Then the surrogate mother is part of another species. It is even necessary to make an artificial uterus with the stem cells of a female Asian elephant. And that’s what Colossal Biosciences also says. I mean, even if they do something that no one has done before, they still won’t have a real mammoth in there. In fact, it will be a hybrid, with 1% mammoth genes and the rest elephant genes. Like, a slightly hairier elephant.

But what can you do that Asian elephants are not adapted to life only in Siberia? They have, for example, huge ears. Mammoths had them small. What if they took Marcochi’s frost like that, they would freeze their ears from the first bite.

What to do with your hairy elephant? Bring it to minus 40 degrees so that its trunk is blown by the cold?

Well, see, Mrs. Church and Mrs. Lemm say that they will solve these defects through genetic engineering (horseradish knows how) because the fetus is in the first weeks of pregnancy. Yes, let’s see how they reduce the ears of the fetus! Then, when the brood is ready, they will make others and mate them until the mammoth genes are selected.

In a few generations, hold on to your seats, we’ll have mammoths closer to the original model.

The same goes for the Tasmanian tiger. That is, they found the closest living relative of this Australian carnivore, which is a burnt marsupial scum only a few centimeters long.

The same steps that mammoths want to take, impregnating a stream with an animal that was several hundred times larger. Or they will use an artificial uterus, with the couple’s stem cells, and get a hybrid. Then the others, they mate them and… Sooo! Avoid the crowds of mammoths and Tasmanian tigers, more like the subway at Unirii during rush hour.

Let’s consider all the obvious disadvantages of such approaches.

Namely, that none of the species mentioned have a complete genome, that the sequences they want to select for are missing parts, that you have no guarantee that you’re damaging the fetus with essential genes, and so on. But Miss Church seems to have forgotten a crucial element in this whole equation. Namely, hybrids are not capable of offspring.

Whether they are mules or other species, none of these animals can produce gametes. Such is nature, do not abuse it. How do they think of getting a mammoth-elephant or tiger-grouse hybrid that hatches cubs on an assembly line? Tell him to shut up!

In fact, you’ll be hearing about this company for some time to come. They say that in the future they want to bring the Neanderthal back to life. And for this they will extract several tens or hundreds of millions of dollars from donations or other funds. Then they got away with genetic research on humans. But they didn’t give many details. How to say, colossal! Colossal biosciences! And even better – a colossal bet to take the money of the gullible. Not that they were the first.