Firm raises $15m to bring back woolly mammoth from extinction
Ten thousand years after woolly mammoths vanished from the face of the Earth, scientists are embarking on an ambitious project to bring the beasts back to the Arctic tundra. The prospect of recreating mammoths and returning them to the wild has been discussed – seriously at times – for more than a decade, but on Monday researchers announced fresh funding they believe could make their dream a reality.
The boost comes in the form of $15m (£11m) raised by the bioscience and genetics company Colossal, co-founded by Ben Lamm, a tech and software entrepreneur, and George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School who has pioneered new approaches to gene editing.
The scientists have set their initial sights on creating an elephant-mammoth hybrid by making embryos in the laboratory that carry mammoth DNA. The starting point for the project involves taking skin cells from Asian elephants, which are threatened with extinction, and reprogramming them into more versatile stem cells that carry mammoth DNA. The particular genes that are responsible for mammoth hair, insulating fat layers and other cold climate adaptions are identified by comparing mammoth genomes extracted from animals recovered from the permafrost with those from the related Asian elephants. These embryos would then be carried to term in a surrogate mother or potentially in an artificial womb. If all goes to plan – and the hurdles are far from trivial – the researchers hope to have their first set of calves in six years.
[...] The project is framed as an effort to help conserve Asian elephants by equipping them with traits that allow them to thrive in vast stretches of the Arctic known as the mammoth steppe. But the scientists also believe introducing herds of elephant-mammoth hybrids to the Arctic tundra may help restore the degraded habitat and combat some of the impacts of the climate crisis. For example, by knocking down trees, the beasts might help to restore the former Arctic grasslands.
Previously: Woolly Mammoth Genome Sequenced
Resurrection of the Woolly Mammoth Could Begin in Two Years
Analysis Supports Conservation of Existing Species Rather Than De-Extinction of Mammoths
Mammoth DNA Activates Briefly in Mouse Eggs
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @11:34AM (3 children)
Hunting was probably more responsible than warming temperatures, although both would have contributed.
The main reason not to do this, in my opinion, is that they would still be mammoth/elephant hybrids, and not true mammoths. An elephant with extra fur isn't a mammoth. Once they have the real deal DNA they can think about it. This isn't reviving mammoths, it's creating a new species. It's not a given that this is a good idea. Reintroduction of locally extinct species has sometimes been good, but this isn't a reintroduction, it's a whole new genetically engineered species.
De-extinction is something that has to go exactly right the first time. Rather than starting with a giant, cuddly animal that already has cartoon characters, they should dig up some mouse bones from a pyramid and practice on them.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Tuesday September 14 2021, @01:21PM (2 children)
I wouldn't call this hybrids, I would call this transgenic elephants. They could certainly go on replacing more and more of the genome using crossing (I suppose that the mammoth sequence is known).
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday September 14 2021, @03:40PM (1 child)
Well, a lot of the genome *is* the same. And I suspect that much of the mammoth genome is unknown. (Paleo-DNA tends to be highly degraded.)
Also, there were several different kinds of mammoth. So it might be hard to tell the difference between a true mammoth and a "transgenic elephant". But the diets they were adapted to were presumably different.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday September 14 2021, @04:12PM
Woolly Mammoth Genome Sequenced [soylentnews.org]
Genomes of Living and Extinct Elephant Species Sequenced [soylentnews.org]
Neanderthals Shared Genetic Similarities With Woolly Mammoths [soylentnews.org]
Million-Year-Old Mammoth DNA Rewrites Animal's Evolutionary Tree [soylentnews.org]
I'm pretty sure there are multiple decent copies of mammoth genomes by now. By 2035 or whenever they feel like making Mammoth 2.0, even better data and supercomputers will be available.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]