Professor Susanna Williams

It's a real breakthrough because the potential to isolate these cells and the potential to use these cells has many, many opportunities, which could be highly influential in conservation. So obtaining them from mice has been done, but developing technologies or rather methodologies. And different ways of doing it to collect the cells from the elephant has been the real ability to do it.

Because, of course, you're collecting these cells from a very dirty environment. So be able to collect cells that are clean and you can keep them clean in culture and remove bacteria is really key.

Oh, it's a very dull, boring process, but we've used lots of different techniques that involve washing and purifying and isolating. And so it's just using a bit of a dilution out and a bit of technology so we can try and spin out the bacteria and isolate them.

Yeah, so this is a technology which is absolutely incredible. So within mice, they've made it so that you can take cells, you can make them skin cells, you can make them into stem cells, and then you can make them into eggs and sperm. And this is the technology which is currently being developed for endangered species.

So this would be a perfect thing to be able to do with cells that we've isolated from elephant dung.

So, for example, there are certain species, and a great example of this is in Australia, and there are certain marsupials that have been eating cane toads. Now, cane toads are introduced, and they're very poisonous, and they don't belong in Australia. And it's wiping out marsupials that are eating them for food, not being resistant to the toxins.

So, by doing a bit of gene editing, you can potentially make it so that it's no longer lethal to them. which is something that could evolve, but they just don't have the time to do that. And there's colleagues of mine working in Australia on that.

That's a very good question. So, yeah, there's a big group, influential group in the States that's working on bringing back the woolly mammoth. Yes.

I'm a big believer in there's many things that are possible, but we've put men on the moon many, many, many years ago. You know, bringing back real, it's about money and time. Whether there's a good enough reason or whether it's going to really be a mammoth or is it going to just be a modified elephant is a very different question.