Cloning From the Frozen Dead

Scientists Reportedly Clone Mice From Frozen Bodies
By Lauren Cox
ABC News Medical Unit

Scientists in Japan say they have successfully cloned a mouse from a body that had been frozen for 16 years, theoretically opening the door to a range of possibilities from preserving endangered animals, to resurrecting extinct animals to cloning Ted Williams.

The authors of the study made no bones about what they believe the implications of their work could be.

"It has been suggested that the 'resurrection' of frozen extinct species, such as the woolly mammoth, is impracticable, as no live cells are available, and the genomic material that remains is inevitably degraded," wrote the authors in the Monday edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

But the researchers say they got around the dead tissue issue by adapting new fertilization techniques for damaged sperm into a cloning technique for damaged frozen tissue. The authors of the study concluded these "techniques could be used to 'resurrect' animals or maintain valuable genomic stocks from tissues frozen for prolonged periods without any cryopreservation."

See: Cloning From the Frozen Dead