Remember a couple weeks ago when scientists managed to clone some dead, frozen mice by finding some intact DNA within the otherwise-destroyed cells? Well, that got Horatio and me, and probably millions of other nerds, wondering how close science was getting to a cloned woolly mammoth.

A lot closer than we thought, it turns out, because the mammoth genome sequence has been published. This is the first time that such a thoroughly extinct genome has been sequenced. There was no fresh, easily accessible DNA to play with here, no “Save the Mammoths” fundraisers or “functionally extinct” status. This animal had been unequivocally gone for thousands of years, and scientists still managed to piece together a complete genome from frozen remains. Go science! Time to get clonin’, right?

Not so much. From the Nature article:

It is a fair bet that a complete genome and closely related species would make it easier to pull a Crichton on a mammoth than on a dinosaur. But easier is far from easy. To put flesh on the bones of the draft sequence — to go from a genome to a living, breathing beast — would require you to master, at the very least, the following steps: defining exactly the sequence or sequences you want for your creatures; synthesizing a full set of chromosomes from these sequences; engulfing them in a nuclear envelope; transferring that nucleus into an egg that would support it; and getting that egg into a womb that would carry it to term. None of those steps is currently possible.

Well, shit. Here I was thinking some of those steps were possible, what with all the cloned animals in the news for the last few years, but the mammoth presents all manner of unique challenges. Chromosomes, especially the male Y chromosome, are just plain hard to assemble, and that difficulty gets ramped up by several orders when you don’t have a live animal to study. It would be just as difficult to scale up the process for DNA synthesis; the longest genome synthesized thus far belong to a bacterium, and the mammoth genome is around 8000 times longer.

And it turns out elephant ova are just a tremendous pain in the ass to collect. Aside from being a pretty rare commodity, elephant biology is just damn weird. Ever wanted to learn about the peculiar limitations of elephant genitalia? Because you’ll find out plenty if you read that article I linked above.

Even if all these problem are overcome and they seriously clone a mammoth, then what? What’s it going to do, besides stand around and eat? It’s not going to pilot our spaceships or get high with us; it isn’t Chewbacca. I’d feel bad for the little guy (or, more likely, gal), and it doesn’t help that the article is accompanied by illustrations of an adorable baby mammoth heading out into the big, scary world, presumably in the hopes of making it in Hollywood.

Actually, that might be the only opportunity a cloned mammoth would have. If somebody manages to clone one, we’re going to see a lot of mammoth-themed movies the following summer, from saccharine family fare like Me and My Mammoth, to thrillers like Mammoth: The Re-Tuskening, to lame action-adventures like 10,000 BC 2: We Got a Real Mammoth and Just Threw Together a Script Around That. It will all culminate with the popular touring show Ice Age… on Ice!, coming soon to a small-town hockey rink near you. At which point Sarah Palin will shoot the mammoth.

Sorry. Palin jokes are a hard habit to break.