Wiped out by over-enthusiastic hunters, the Pyrenean ibex, a kind of mountain goat, has been brought back to life by cloning technology. Sadly, the cloned kid's weak lungs could only keep it going for 7 minutes after birth.The last Pyrenean ibex, a female called Cecilia, was found dead in 2000. Scientists used DNA from her skin cells to create a clone, inserting Ceclia's DNA into the eggs of a domestic goat - a closely related species.
As always, people are getting very excited about Crichton-esque possibilities. But resurrecting long-dead animals like mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers is much more challenging due to the degraded state of ancient DNA, though there have been some recent breakthroughs.
It looks to me like the ibex clone is more significant for efforts to safeguard living species that are critically endangered.
But even if Cecilia's clone had survived, scientists would still have needed to create a male companion for her to ensure the survival of the species. This seems like quite a considerable barrier to me!
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If they had male to clone from, with both an X and a Y chromosome, would they have been able to create a female, using two of the X's?
Maybe this could be an option?
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