Interestingly, the CIA has invested in a company looking to do exactly what RevRico described.
Dallas company aims to bring back the woolly mammoth and Tasmanian tiger
Interestingly, the CIA has invested in a company looking to do exactly what RevRico described.
Dallas company aims to bring back the woolly mammoth and Tasmanian tiger
In reply to dyintorace :
WHY DOES THE CIA WANT MAMMOTHS AND TASMANIAN TIGERS?
In reply to Keith Tanner :
Well Keith, I'm glad you asked! Please allow Kevin O'Connell and Eugene Chiu, the leaders of In-Q-Tel (the CIA's non-profit VC firm) to explain.
TR7 said:SV reX said:In reply to TR7 :
I'm really curious...
Your entire career surrounds the study of mammoths?
No slight intended.. im trying to learn. What's the application to the world today of full time mammoth study? I would have thought that would be a subset of a larger field of scientific study. I had no idea people could just focus on mammoths, and I'm really curious how that translates in real world application.
Teach me. (BTW.. nice job on the 5 year old description of myoglobin. I learned something!)
In a broad sense, my research is on identifying genetic changes and predicting their biological impacts, I focused on mammoth in the beginning of my career, but the skill-set can be applied to many things.
The first half of my career was the study of extinct or near extinct animals and their unique environmentally-related genome adaptations; likely reasons mammoths thrived and possible reasons for their later decline. Once you kick that door open (proven yourself and your methods) the real world application applies in pharma, hospitals, biotech, investment banks, disease and population research, engineering, cancer, military, invasive species eradication... I switched to agriculture and now work to fortify US food production in the face of adverse events (drought, disease, inbreeding, ecological damage, population needs, ect.).
Very cool. Thanks!
Id never think to look for a mammoth expert on a car forum!
...I'd actually never think to look for a mammoth expert at all!
In reply to dyintorace :
I'd never considered the CIA might have a DARPA equivalent (of sorts).
In reply to SV reX :
You don't know you need a mammoth expert until you need a mammoth expert!
In reply to Keith Tanner :
Mammoths and whale sperm.
dyintorace said:Interestingly, the CIA has invested in a company looking to do exactly what RevRico described.
Dallas company aims to bring back the woolly mammoth and Tasmanian tiger
These guys 
. Smart people, but they market themselves exactly like you are imagining. Its hilariously embarrassing.
Keith Tanner said:In reply to dyintorace :
WHY DOES THE CIA WANT MAMMOTHS AND TASMANIAN TIGERS?
Wet work. With proper training they'd make an excellent kill team. No traceable ties to any nation. They would have the ability to move around discretely "under the radar."
In reply to 1988RedT2 :
Nothing says "under the radar" than a big hairy elephant sneaking around.
Amongst some of my other friends, this has turned into the question of eating meat made from your own DNA, and the ethics of vegetarianism when the meat doesn't really come from an animal.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
Or cannibalism.
Keith Tanner said:Nothing says "under the radar" than a big hairy elephant sneaking around.
Exactly!
In reply to SV reX :
If it's your own clone, is it really cannibalism or just recyling?
In reply to Keith Tanner :
Me Stew.
Keith Tanner said:In reply to SV reX :
If it's your own clone, is it really cannibalism or just recyling?
Mind blown.
SV reX said:In reply to RevRico :
But it doesn't say "meat preserved for thousands of years".
It says "cultured from extinct mammoth DNA".
What the berkeley does THAT mean??
I am pretty sure all mammoths are extinct.
OTOH mammoths roamed the steppes when Cleopatra was alive. If humans have eaten lobster and squid and durian on purpose, I am pretty sure humans have eaten mammoth and survived 
I would be more concerned with eating cultured meat. Raising an animal to kill it and part it out for food has its issues, but animals have immune systems. Cultures do not. But cultures are still susceptible to infections.
I don't have much to add other than I heard that the real problem with lab-grown meat is that it has no structure. A Ribeye tastes like a ribeye because the steer used that muscle a certain way, was fed a certain diet, and stored fat a certain way in that muscle. It developed muscle tissue under very specific circumstances that they can't duplicate in a lab. It ends up being a mass of muscle cells instead of a specific muscle.
Still... I'd eat it.
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