By Cole Gee | Staff Writer
“Jurassic Park” tends to be the first idea many think of when it comes to the process of bringing back a species from extinction. After all, death is one of life’s many guarantees and the idea of humanity being able to cheat it and bringing back lost animals could only be achieved through Hollywood magic.
Until now. The company Colossal Biosciences prides itself on being the first and only “de-extinction” company. They’ve gone viral recently for successfully restoring the long-extinct dire wolf, but many geneticists and scientists believe the situation is not as simple as it seems.
The Dallas-based company was founded in 2021 by Harvard University professor and geneticist Dr. George Church and entrepreneur Ben Lamm.
Scientists estimate that every 20 minutes, a species goes extinct and by the end of the century, almost half of the world’s species could disappear. Colossal Bioscience is working to set back the clock and make the process of extinction a thing of the past.
Dr. Mariana Giassetti is an assistant professor at Baylor and an expert in animal reproduction and biosciences. When it comes to the three dire wolf cubs, Giassetti argues that they are like their ancient ancestors.
“The dire wolf that they have right now will not be a 100% match,” Glassett said. “That’s why it’s a functional de-extinction because we recreate the phenotypes. But they will have genes … that will create phenotypes that will resemble a dire wolf.”
Colossal Biosciences was able to resurrect the dire wolf through a genetic technique called CRISPR-Cas9.
Conducting the CRISPR-Cas9 technique isn’t like “Jurassic Park,” she said. The scientists did not have access to a perfectly-preserved specimen in amber, and instead had to edit grey wolf genes to become as similar to dire wolves as they could.
Colossal made edits to 14 out of the available 19,000 grey wolf genes. They then inserted the embryo into their mother wolf and were able to birth the three cubs known as Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi.
Giassetti said this entire ordeal is closer to a “proof of concept” for Colossal Bioscience and that the company still has a long way to go in terms of their technology. But it’s a great place to start, she said.
Despite how incredible of a scientific achievement as this is, there are still many ethical and functional issues being raised with functional de-extinction.
Detroit senior Haidyn Nevedal is an undergraduate at Baylor pursuing a degree in biochemistry. As a biochem major, the work Colossal Biosciences has done would mean big things for the future of his profession. However, he does admit there are some ethical concerns about the work of conservation and how de-extinction could affect it.
“[This could remove the] jobs from people who are helping to actively preserve these species and work towards bringing them back,” Nevedal said. “I think this field will completely almost remove the need for preservation of wildlife teams who are working on keeping these species alive because you can just create more.”
This is a fear for many in the conservation field. Conservation efforts as of late have been historically underfunded despite the proven success rate, with the most successful effort being The Endangered Species Act. The Endangered Species Act has a 99% success rate, with a majority of the animals listed on it avoiding extinction.
One of the most famous successful stories is the American Bald Eagle, which by the mid-’90s was largely in danger of going extinct. Thanks to conservation efforts like Habitat Protection and the banning of DDT insecticide, the Bald Eagle is no longer endangered and has been off the list since 2007.
Dr. Neil Messer is a professor of bioethics at Baylor whose life’s work focuses on raising and attempting to answer these ethical dilemmas regarding bioengineering. On the topic of conservation, he said this new de-extinction program could be “a distraction for more urgent conservation priorities.”
“The counterargument to that, which I think Colossal Biosciences would express, would be this project is proof of concept for a technique that could also be used to help conserve existing endangered species,” Messer said. “That could be right, but there still needs to be some careful thoughts about whether that’s the most effective way to do your conservation, whether that meets the most urgent needs and meets them as effectively as possible.”
As it stands today, the company is now focusing its efforts not only on their dire wolves, but the woolly mammoth as well. In the past, they were able to replicate the genes of a woolly mammoth on a mouse giving it a larger, fluffier coat. The company is now attempting to patent their new furry creature and possibly the rights to future de-extinct animals as well.
