Mouse cloned from frozen cell

Mouse cloned from frozen cell

Japanese scientists of the Riken Research Institute, Tokyo created a mouse from a dead cell frozen for 16 years, taking a step in the long impossible dream of bringing back extinct animals such as mammoths.

Scientists used the dead cells of a mouse that had been preserved at -20 degree celcius, a temperature similar to frozen ground. They extracted a cell-nucleus from an organ of the dead mouse and planted it into an egg of another mouse which was alive, leading to the birth of the cloned mouse.

The newly developed technology of nucleus transfer greatly improved the possibility reviving extinct animals.

The cloned mouse is able to reproduce with a female mouse. But the researchers said tough challenges remain ahead on how to restore extinct animals which would require breeding with animals that are still alive.

To revive a mammoth, researchers would need to find a way to implant a cell nucleus of mammoth into the egg of an elephant and then implant the embryo into an elephant uterus.