It's strange to have a felony for unlicensed imports of genetic material. The law the press release cites classifies that as "animal parts". Hypothetically—woul

It's strange to have a felony for unlicensed imports of genetic material. The law the press release cites classifies that as "animal parts". Hypothetically—would it be the same crime if they sequenced the DNA of those sheep in Kyrgyzstan, transmitted the sequences electronically into the USA, and then synthesized the DNA from the digital sequence? Ignoring the question of whether that's currently feasible or not. Would it be legal to synthesize* i.e. extinct mammoths from paleontological DNA samples? Would it make a difference which part of the globe the mammoth samples were found in? *(I don't know what the correct terminology is)