28,000-Year Old Woolly Mammoth Cells Briefly Reactivated by Scientists

Scientists have done something crazy. A little over a month ago, scientists reactivated a couple of cells from a 28,000-year old woolly mammoth. The cells came from an incredibly preserved woolly mammoth that was unearthed in 2010. Now, Kazuo Yamagata and a team of scientists took some cells from the muscle tissue of the woolly mammoth, who has been named Yuka, and put them in mouse ovarian cells called oocytes. Then, when incubated, the mammoth cells appeared to reactivate, yet no cell division occurred. Some of the processes required for cell division were observed though.

Researchers have observed biological activity after transplanting cell nuclei from the 28,000-year-old remains of a woolly mammoth from the Siberian permafrost into mice oocytes. Read the paper, published in @SciReports, here: https://t.co/21TwWRa8aX pic.twitter.com/DkjfoBFSB6

— Nature Research (@nresearchnews) March 12, 2019

This is an incredible discovery, but I feel like this warrants the classic warning from one Dr. Ian Malcolm:

Uploaded by Mo So on 2015-07-31.

Via: Nerdist