Remember Colossal Bioscience? The company that claimed to have resurrected the extinct dire wolf? They didn’t; they did produce genetically modified gray wolves (Canis lupus), which are not even in the same genus as the dire wolf (Aenocyon dirus).
Now Colossal is back in the news again. They have some other genetic irons in the fire, and one of those is aimed at bringing back the extinct dodo (Raphus cucullatus), which they also likely can’t do. Now, that’s not to say they aren’t doing some interesting work, and the other day they did announce a neat little breakthrough.
Scientists at a Texas-based company made a major breakthrough towards reviving the dodo bird nearly 300 years after extinction.
Colossal Biosciences announced on Wednesday that researchers had, for the first time, successfully grown pigeon primordial germ cells, the precursor cells to sperm and eggs.
“Our avian team’s breakthrough in deriving culture conditions that allow pigeon primordial germ cells to survive long-term is a significant advancement for dodo de-extinction,” Colossal CEO and co-founder Ben Lamm said in a press release.
Speaking as a biologist, this is interesting. It is a breakthrough, and not an insignificant one. But these aren’t dodo primordial germ cells; they are pigeon (Columba livia) primordial germ cells, and while pigeons and dodos are related, it’s a distant relation. What this is liable to mean is that, much like with the “dire wolves,” whatever Colossal produces will be a genetically modified… pigeon.
Colossal is also working on a more mammoth project.
Colossal has previously projected that they would be able to produce woolly mammoth calves by the year 2028.
Again, these will be genetically modified examples of the woolly mammoth’s closest living relative, the Indian elephant, which is, again, not in the same genus as the woolly mammoth.
So, interesting, but a bit overblown.
Read More: Bioscience Company Plans to Resurrect the Moa. They Can’t.
A Dire Situation? Scientists Claim to Have Brought Back Long-Extinct ‘Game of Thrones’ Species
Dodos are one thing, of course, but modifying an elephant to approximate a mammoth is a tad different. Rather than having what is essentially a giant flightless pigeon, with the elephant, you’ll have a huge, powerful animal that is horribly out of place, not to mention alone like no other creature before. You could never put them back in a mammoth habitat. In the first place, most of that habitat, the ice age mammoth steppe, doesn’t exist now. (I think Al Gore warned us about this.) In the second place, mammoths were intelligent creatures with strong family bonds, prolonged parental care, and complex behaviors. Any new “mammoth” wouldn’t have any other, older beasts to teach it what being a mammoth is all about.
What you will have here, assuming they can produce anything, is an expensive animal that will never roam free; an expensive genetically-engineered chimera that will be one of the most expensive creatures in history.
Any actual de-extinction would require somehow obtaining a complete DNA sequence, somehow figuring out how to assemble the DNA into chromosomes while not knowing what the original chromosomes looked like or how they were arranged, and then inserting those chromosomes into an egg.
It sounds a lot like the Jurassic Park “Underwear Gnomes” technique of generic engineering:
- Find and extract DNA
- Squeeze DNA into an ostrich egg
- ???
- Dinosaur!
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