Reproducing a baby wooly mammoth may be possible in the years to come, said one of the world’s leading researchers of ancient DNA at a presentation yesterday in the History Department. In a one-hour presentation before a small audience of faculty and students, Hendrik Poinar of Canada’s McMaster University acknowledged that what was once seen as nothing more than a pseudo-scientific pipedream reserved for science fiction could one day become reality.

Poinar claimed that new breakthroughs in the science of paleogenomics — the study of ancient DNA extracted from preserved or fossilized specimens — has unlocked a doorway to understanding and isolating the DNA of ancient extinct species, to the extent that clones of long-ago species such as wooly mammoths and saber tooth tigers may one day be produced.

“The reality is it will happen,” Poinar said concerning the cloning of extinct species. “Twenty to 30 years is the span people are talking about.”

Poinar’s research over the last several years has yielded unprecedented isolation and sequencing of the genomes of extinct species, particularly in ancient human ancestors and the mammoth. For the latter species, Poinar, along with his research teams, has collected thousands of samples of preserved mammoth DNA taken from specimens frozen in the permafrost of Siberia, the Yukon and elsewhere. He claimed that, in general, colder climates offer researchers a better chance of finding preserved DNA among fossil specimens.

“If you want to get nuclear DNA,” he said, “you have to go north.”

Poinar focused the majority of his presentation on addressing his work in locating and isolating mammoth DNA. In one research expedition to Siberia, he and his team analyzed the DNA of numerous mammoth specimens taken from a shelf of permafrost that had been preserved by Siberian researchers in an “ice cave” formerly used to store Soviet nuclear weapons.

“Here you have the blood of a 60,000-year-old mammoth squirting out,” Poinar said. “It’s really quite amazing.”

He then went on to explain that the specimens collected from the Siberian site yielded approximately 14 million base-pairs of mammoth DNA in the course of about five hours.

Poinar’s method of isolating and, in some cases, reconstructing ancient DNA utilizes a method of sequencing in which all of the DNA samples present in a specific specimen, from animal to fungal and bacterial, are separated out and analyzed by a computerized system. With this type of sequencing available, he claimed, real paleogenomic breakthroughs should be right around the corner.

With regards to the cloning issue, Poinar referred back to one of his most widely known media experiences, in which Katie Couric interviewed him alongside Steven Spielberg for “The Today Show” to address the question of whether the genomic methods used to produce clones of dinosaurs in the sci-fi blockbuster “Jurassic Park” could ever be used to reproduce extinct animals in real life. As more time passes, advances in paleogenomic research are bringing science fiction closer to reality.

Even so, Poinar was hesitant to praise the potential benefits of scientists taking such steps to reproduce extinct species.

“There’s a huge moral issue of whether you should do it,” he said, and he added that the last thing scientists want is to let the reproduction of extinct species become “a scapegoat for the current lack of biodiversity” in the earth’s ecosystems, of which humans are largely to blame.

“I think theoretically it can happen, but will it happen is really the question,” he said.

Poinar also added that completely reconstructing the genomes of extinct species requires that those species have a close living example available for borrowing and comparison. In that sense, mammoths, extinct cats and human ancestors would be the easiest genomes to recreate given the availability of living descendants.

Actual efforts to reproduce extinct living organisms from their DNA are currently being pursued by other researchers. Many Japanese scientists have also been scouring the permafrost of North America, but in search of preserved mammoth sperm for the purpose of producing an offspring with a female Asian elephant through in vitro fertilization.

Aside from that, one previously extinct organism — the 1918 influenza virus which killed approximately 40 million people worldwide — has successfully been reproduced through its genome.

Of this experiment, Poinar said he was “flabbergasted” that so little outcry was made against reproducing a pandemic virus compared to the outrage generated by his research, which could do no more than reproduce a baby wooly mammoth.