Ivan Moreno
Biology 41
MW 9:35
Spring 2013

De-Extinction: Goats, Wooly Mammoths and Conservatives

The gap between purposely cause extinction and the failure of a species to go through evolutionary adaptation presumes to get smaller and smaller. Many articles, books and databases claim to say that the process of “de-extinction” will morally give us a right of way when speaking of what caused the disappearance of certain animals. While on the other hand, many scientists speak of animals that are now extinct, are extinct for the reason of their inability to adapt to environments. The recent advancements in “synthetic” biology, or the manipulating of the ecological succession of certain species, have led many researchers to believe that the findings and extractions of genetic material from a viable specimen can lead to the resurrection of the species if it isn’t already found on Earth. Although moral implications and the philosophy behind de-extinction seem to be cemented into society, the science behind this concept isn’t perfected just yet. In the article “Will we kill off today’s animals if we revive extinct one?” , by David Biello, he states that although the progress in “de-extinction” has been thorough, evidence of it not being very quintessential is the first de-extinction experiment performed on a goat in 2003 at the University of New South Wales in Australia. The goat, although successfully extracted, wielded an extra lung and couldn’t breathe normally, resulting its life to only last a mere 10 minutes. He also quotes Michael Archer, a paleontologist at the Australian university, by stating “if it’s clear that we exterminated these species, we not only have a moral obligation to see what we can do about it but a moral imperative to do something if we can”. This further leads to the sub-article within this same article named “Sixth extinction”, where the conservation scientist Kate Jones of the University College of London in also quoted after she said “As a human species, we have been amazingly efficient at making things extinct”. Her quote is later supported by Biello revealing how the effects of hunting and man made global climate changes are driving the world to suffer the loss of half of all species currently living. Aside from the goat incident back in 2003 failing, the scientists also have to recall that once the female clone is made, and male clone, or Y chromosome will have to be made or found to mate with the female clone and successfully recreate the species. Another possibility for de-extinction is simply growing more stem cells from “ancient DNA” to provide all the genetic code required to bring the different species’ back to life. Going back to the actual species resurrection, Beth Shapiro, a paleogenomicist from the University of California, Santa Cruz, stated to an audience that regenerating old, extinct life is just the first of many steps. As an example, the wooly mammoth was used, where as if it was indeed brought back to life, it’s habitat and ecosystem would be missing almost entirely. He also stated that firstly, the revival of the ecosystem itself should be put into perspective. Finally in the conclusive sub-article named “Keep it cool”, Biello mentions how despite the loss of so much artic like habitat has occurred, the key to maintaining biodiversity within these ecosystems may be at the San Diego zoo, where already over 740 organisms are kept in an environment kept at a constant -197 degrees Celsius. Nevertheless, before even beginning to think about de-extinction once more, many other thoughts have come into place arguing about its side effects on the modern day world. Conservationists have worried about these sort of projects taking away money and attention from organizations set up to prevent the loss of anymore species. With the experimentations of genetic engineering and cloning seemingly on the rise, the benefit for the biological world, both in and outside of the