Photo Gallery Playing Noah in the Lab
In a bid to save endangered species, scientists are tearing down biological barriers and creating embryos that contain cell material from two different species of mammals. Iberian lynxes (shown here), tigers, Ethiopian wolves and panda bears could all soon be carried to term by related surrogate mothers, and thus saved for future generations.
A graphic of the interspecies cloning process.
Researchers have already succeeded in producing pluripotent stem cells from snow leopards (shown here) and northern white rhinoceroses, which are both endangered species.
"Interspecies cloning is an amazing tool to ensure that an endangered species carries on," says Gómez. "We can't wait until those species have disappeared." Could endangered giant pandas like this one be among those to be cloned?
Japanese scientists are even trying to clone the woolly mammoth after viable cell nuclei were discovered frozen in the permafrost of Northeast Siberia for the past 15,000 years. Here, scientists inspect the carcass of a baby woolly mammoth.
