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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: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 15 2021, @01:10AM (2 children)
My take is that "natural order", or rather your conception of it, needs some mocking. No amount of fatuous sanctimony will bring back a species that has gone extinct. This technology will.
And if we can bring back mammoths from being extinct for over 6,000 years, then we definition can do something more recent like bring back polar bears or orangutans from the edge of extinction.
My take is that doing the right is more important than why you're doing the right thing. If hypocrisy brings back the mammoths, I'll consider it a great deal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17 2021, @05:08PM (1 child)
"Bringing back" species is pointless if we continue to occupy the land they need and perpetuate the conditions that led to their extinction. These "mammoths" will only benefit zoos and novelty meat producers.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 18 2021, @12:10AM
"IF". There's still quite a bit of unoccupied, mammoth-friendly land out there, such as most of Siberia. And if they were hunted to extinction in the first place, then not hunting them to extinction a second time would qualify as perpetuating a different sort of conditions.