Extinction is still eternal, but scientists at biotech companies are trying out Colossal Biosciences. Restoration of ancient beasts – Genetically living animals with qualities similar to extinct species, like wool mammoths.
Woolly Mammoths roamed the frozen tundras of Europe, Asia and North America until they became extinct about 4,000 years ago.
Colossal splashed when it unveiled the ambitious thing in 2021 Plan to revive the wool mammoth And then a dodo bird. Last year, the company said it created a breakthrough in efforts to regain extinction. Tasmanian Tiger.
Colossal focuses on identifying key properties of extinct animals by studying ancient DNA, with the goal of genetically “designing them for living animals.”
AP
In a 2023 interview, CBS News correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti I told Ram“I hear the mammoth and the dodo in the same sentence, but that’s science fiction for me.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” Lamb said, “until not.”
External scientists have a variety of views on whether this strategy will help conservation.
“You’ve actually not revived anything. You’ve not regained the ancient past,” said Christopher Preston, a wildlife and environment expert at the University of Montana, who was not involved in the research.
On Tuesday, Colossal announced that the scientist simultaneously edited seven genes in a mouse embryo to create a mouse with long, thick, wool hair. They called the ultra-covered rodents “giant wool mice.”
Results were posted online, but they have not yet been published in the journal or reviewed by independent scientists.
The feat is “technically pretty cool,” says Vincent Lynch, a biologist at the University of Buffalo, who was not involved in the research.
Scientists have been genetically engineering mice since the 1970s, but new technologies like CRISPR will “make them more efficient and easier,” Lynch said.
The giant scientists reviewed the DNA database of mouse genes to identify genes associated with hair texture and fat metabolism. Each of these genetic mutations “is already present in several live mice,” said Beth Shapiro, the lead scientist at Corosal, but “we put them all together in a single mouse.”
Two traits were chosen because these mutations are likely to be associated with cold tolerance. This is the quality that must have had to survive on prehistoric Arctic grasslands.
Independent experts skeptical of “de-tension”
Colossal said that it could first focus on the mouse to see if the process works and move to edit the embryos of Asian elephants, the living relatives that are potentially closest to wool mammoths.
However, since elephants in Asia are endangered species, there will be “a lot of processes and deficits” before the plans move forward, said Lamm of Colossal.
“We’re in the world of synthetic biology. These tools exist. It’s difficult to bring the Genie back into the bottle. We have to be really thoughtful about the intentional and unintended consequences of our actions.” CBS News Talking to Boston 2022.
Independent experts are skeptical of the idea of ​​”detension.”
“We may be able to change the hair pattern of Asian elephants or adapt to the cold, but we haven’t regained the wool mammoth, we’re changing the elephants in Asia,” said Preston of the University of Montana.
AP
Still, he said that refinement of precision gene editing in animals could have other uses for conservation and animal agriculture, according to Banu Telugu, who studied animal biotechnology at the University of Missouri and was not involved in new research.
Telugu said he was impressed with Colossal’s technology advancements that allow scientists to identify which genes to target.
The same approach may help combat people’s illnesses one day, Lamb said. So far, the company has spun two healthcare companies.
“It’s part of how we monetize our business,” Lamb said.
Book author Ben Mezrich wrote “Wool: A true story of quest to revive one of the most iconic extinct creatures in history,” He spoke to CBS News in 2017 Reviving wool mammoths could potentially encourage medical breakthroughs.
“I mean, the elephants don’t have cancer, that’s very strange,” he told CBS News. “Elephants have thousands of cells than we do. And why they don’t get cancer is in their genes. If you can understand that, you can use this genetic engineering to solve cancer.”
