Scientists have had to painstakingly line up these bits of confetti on a computer to create a mammoth genome. But this DNA sequence, it's just letters on a screen. Scientists need actual live DNA. So they look to the mammoth's closest living relative, the Asian elephant. You can line them all up and scan across these four billion letters. That's how big the elephant genome is. And ask where they're different from each other. At this point, scientists can edit the actual DNA itself. Then you would take a living cell from an elephant. And you would use the gene editing tools, like CRISPR, to basically cut and paste your way from an Asian elephant to a
Scientists are hard at work trying to bring back woolly mammoths (and dodos). But should they? And what would they actually be bringing back?
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