Recreating Woolly Mammoths

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Recreating Woolly Mammoths This week Japanese scientists announced they had created clones from the frozen bodies of mice. This work, they claimed, raised the possibility of recreating extinct animals such as woolly mammoths and sabre tooth tigers. For Leading Edge, Geoff went to the Natural History Museum in London to ask mammoth expert Professor Adrian Lister, if this was possible or even desirable? Animal research The European Commission has this week presented proposals for strengthening the protection of laboratory animals. John Stein, professor of neuroscience at Oxford University and professor emeritus Michael Balls of FRAME (Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experiments) debate the phasing out of non-human primates in research. Scientific Biographies It’s time we all understood more about science, says biographer Richard Holmes and a very good way to do this is to understand the lives of the scientists themselves. Synthetic Biology Synthetic biology is a new science, by which you can build your own organism, removing the bits of its chemistry you don’t want, and replacing them with something different. The 2008 International Genetically Engineered Machine competition, iGEM for short, takes place this weekend at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in America. Geoff went to meet the young scientists from Cambridge entering the competition.