Is it possible to clone a extinct animal/plant/tree?

Question

ive been watching

stem cell documentarys on discovery channel

and they mentioned the 1996 sheep cloning in italy

should it be possible to clone

a extinct animal using its bones or somethin?

Answer 1

If you can get an intact copy of its DNA, then it would be possible to clone an extinct species of plant or animal.  Plants would probably be easier, but both are theoretically possible but where to find an intact copy of DNA of an extinct species.  The premise in "Jurassic Park" of finding it in mosquitoes preserved in amber is intriguing but usually the DNA is not intact.  

Answer 2

As of right now, no.

See, in the cloning process, the DNA is taken from the specimen, and inserted into an egg that has had it's nucleus removed. Then, the egg is put through a series of electrical shocks until it starts replicating like an embryo.

The hitch is: (a) you would need to find an egg from that species of animal to insert the DNA into it, and (b) you would have to find a female to carry it in her womb to term.

The problem with (b) can probably be solved if a recent descendant of that extinct animal can be found (eg, using a female Asian Elephant to carry a woolly mammoth clone in her womb), but we're still kind of stuck on problem (a). And, were we able to solve it, and we DID have a descendant to implant the clone into, there is little guarantee. Elephants, in the case of mammoths, and many reptiles, in the case of dinosaurs, breed very poorly if at all in captivity, let alone a clone, which would be a VERY high risk pregnancy. As it is, it took 277 tries to get Dolly the sheep cloned, and compared to elephants and komodo dragons, sheep are a breeze!

So, long answer condensed down to just a sentence: Might be possible one day, but we're nowhere near that time!

Answer 3

Not yet.

The problem with things like dinosaurs is that we don't have any of their DNA. We have their bones but that is simply a calcium deposit made by your cells. They aren't living cells and do not have DNA, so there is none present in the bones to clone.

It is also not possible to birth one species from another. So even if they isolated Dino DNA and put it into a cell and implanted it into a womb of a living animal, the zygote would be immediately aborted.

Answer 4

If you could get a whole nucleus, yes.

Efforts are underway to clone a thylacine, an extinct marsupial predator that died in the early 20th century.

Answer 5

If they can insert a dna sequence into a living cell that has had its nucleus removed. Like Jurassic park. Technology isn't quite there yet. You get a few viable cells & a lot of soup. Then there is the problem of growing it into a animal.

Not much point in doing it. If you're going to throw it back into the same polluted pond that killed it off in the first place, all you'll have is an expensive roadkill.

Answer 6

yes, if its frozen in a block of ice, such as that wooly mammoth, the cells are stored and can be made into a clone