Startup Looks To Create Woolly Mammoth Hybrids By 2027 After $15M Funding
Photo 127674910 © Planetfelicity | Dreamstime.com
A startup named Colossal has a pretty unique goal that can also be described as simply that: colossal. With CRISPR, a gene-editing technology, the company aims to “revive” the woolly mammoth and bring this creature back to life in less than 10 years’ time.
Built by a tech and software entrepreneur named Ben Lamm and Harvard Medical School professor George Church, the bioscience company is said to “rapidly advance the field of species de-extinction” using CRISPR.
This technology had a lot to learn from bacteria. It was evolved from the way bacteria identified attacking viruses and destroyed their DNA, as explained by Live Science.
Its capability to alter DNA and gene function has been investigated in the context of treating disease and minor genetic modification , but never before today was it leveraged to reverse the extinction of an entire species.
Image via Business Wire
Colossal’s “new, disruptive conservation approach” has the goal to “restore” the woolly mammoth to the Arctic tundra, then move on to rewild more currently extinct species while expanding its conservation efforts to animals that are critically endangered, according to Lamm.
“Our focus is on species preservation and protection of biodiversity right now, not in putting them in zoos,” he clarifies in a statement obtained by CNET.
The company recognizes that bringing the woolly mammoth back to life exactly as it was all those millennia ago isn’t feasible nor practical, so the team has settled for an “elephant-mammoth hybrid that is genetically engineered with traits to help it survive in the Arctic.”
Per The Guardian the company is planning to create these elephant-based hybrids with lab-grown embryos. This would be done by taking skin cells from endangered Asian elephants and “reprogramming” them into versatile stem cells imbued with mammoth DNA.
What results would be an elephant with key mammoth characteristics, such as their hair and insulating fat layers, carried to term via a surrogate mother.
“Our goal is to make a cold-resistant elephant, but it is going to look and behave like a mammoth,” Church further explains to The Guardian. “Not because we are trying to trick anybody, but because we want something that is functionally equivalent to the mammoth, that will enjoy its time at -40ºC.”
The fact that elephants and mammoths also happen to enjoy knocking trees over is particularly important in this development as the team believes that it will help to restore the natural grasslands of the Arctic.
Church also tells CNET that “technologies discovered in pursuit of this grand vision – a living, walking proxy of a woolly mammoth – could create very significant opportunities in conservation and beyond.” He cites igniting public interest in STEM, initiating “timely discussions” for bioethics, and raising awareness of biodiversity’s criticality as some.
The company has secured US$15 million in funding from various investors for this project to date, as reported in its press release.
Welcome to a new dawn of genetics. The @ItIsColossal team is thrilled to bring you a brighter future through #deextinction efforts to help restore lost ecosystems.
— Colossal (@ItIsColossal) September 13, 2021
Read more: https://t.co/IsPrjcmo8E pic.twitter.com/bTcJPPOjgd
[via CNET, images via various sources]
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