A project of Mammoth proportions

This week in Nature a genome sequence for the Woolly Mammoth is published. Thats right the extinct Woolly Mammoth. Geneticist are so brash and audacious that the sequences of living animals are no longer challenging enough. We have to look for the extinct ones too. Now while the paper may make claims about how this is important for evolutionary studies and comparative genomics they aren't fooling me. We all know that the major driving force behind this is to fulfill the dream of cloning an extinct animal. Of course this dream will never be fully realized until that animal is a dinosaur (probably a T. Rex) and while a mammoth is probably about 1/400th as cool as a dino it would be an important first step in getting those dinos back. So can it be done? The quick answer is no. The long more drawn out answer is also no, but we can talk about what it would take to possibly do it some day. In fact in a Nature News Feature they simultaneously discuss the possibilities of acheiving a cloned mammoth and also dash those dreams with the sheer magnitude and near impossibility of the project. There are essentially 5 steps that would be required. You need the exact sequence(s) from the animal (even this sequence they have published is pretty shoddy and of a low quality with plenty of gaps and missing info). You some how need to know how this sequence is arranged genomically into chromosomes (yep this doesn't come automatic with a sequence). You have to put these into a nuclear envelope and transfer that into an egg that would support it (the essence of cloning). Lastly you somehow you have to place that egg in a womb that would carry it to term (in this case probably an elephant egg and an elephant womb). Plenty of scientists were willing to discuss how theoretically these could all be accomplished, but at this time they are all either ridiculously expensive, improbable, unethical, or for all intents and purposes impossible. So anyone who was itching for any mammoth steaks is probably going to have to wait for a lot longer. Sadly even longer for any dinoback rides. Come on science!