A biotechnology company whose goal is to bring back the wooly mammoth says its recent small step is big news.
Colossal Biosciences of Texas has said it aims to restore extinct species to the planet. The company made the woolly mammoth one of its first missions, setting a goal of having a mammoth walk the earth in 2028.
Recently, the company unveiled what it called a woolly mouse as a sort of proof-of-concept.
“The colossal woolly mouse marks a watershed moment in our de-extinction mission,” Ben Lamm, Colossal’s co-founder and chief executive, said, according to Nature.
Colossal’s goal is to create genes that are key to the distinctive set of genes possessed by the massive creatures that roamed North America until their extinction 4,000 years ago. To do that, it will take genes in existing animals and adapt them until they find what would be characteristics of a mammoth.
Its recent experiment was to alter the genes of mice to produce mammoth-like characteristics such as long hair, tolerance for cold, and extra fat stored by the body. Researchers use gene-editing techniques to produce the mice, which were displayed earlier this month.
Texas bioengineering company Colossal Biosciences has created ‘woolly mice.’ They look like normal mice with long hair, but are engineered mouse-equivalents of mammoth genes pic.twitter.com/y3F8Kyuwyx
— Reuters (@Reuters) March 5, 2025
As noted by the Associated Press, the science behind woolly mice has not yet been vetted by anyone outside the company or published in a journal.
Should companies be attempting to bring back extinct animals?
Still, Vincent Lynch, a biologist at the University of Buffalo, said the result “is technologically pretty cool.”
Beth Shapiro, chief scientist for the company, which also wants to bring back the dodo bird, said that the next animals to be experimented upon would be Asian elephants, the closest genetic link to woolly mammoths.
Lamm said that the endangered status of the Asian elephant could be a barrier to their progress.
Robin Lovell-Badge, head of stem cell biology and developmental genetics at the Francis Crick Institute in London, said behind the slick technical work, there might be less than meets the eye, according to the U.K. Guardian.
“My overall concern is whether this is a sensible use of resources rather than spending the money on trying to prevent species becoming extinct,” Lovell-Badge said.
“As it is, we have some cute-looking hairy mice, with no understanding of their physiology, behavior, etc,” he said.
“It doesn’t get them [the researchers] any closer to know if they would eventually be able to give an elephant useful mammoth-like traits and we have learned little biology,” he said.
Tori Herridge of the University of Sheffield said reaching the company’s goal will be a tall order.
“Engineering a mammoth-like elephant presents a far greater challenge: the actual number of genes likely to be involved is far higher, the genes are less well understood -– and still need to be identified –- and the surrogate will be an animal that is not normally experimented upon,” Herridge said.
Colossal Biosciences raised $200M at a $10.2B post to bring back animals from extinction
They’re on track for a Woolly Mammoth calf in 2028, and are also working on the dodo and Tasmanian tiger
This is super cool but beyond my pay grade… what is the business opportunity? pic.twitter.com/rCKOQJH5RQ
— Sheel Mohnot (@pitdesi) January 15, 2025
Herridge also said the project does not seem to be making progress.
“Mammoth de-extinction doesn’t seem to be on the horizon anytime soon,” said Herridge.
Lamm said his work is already making a difference.
“Every single week, we get, like, little kids drawing pictures of dodos or mammoths, and their parents sending us a thing saying ‘thank you for doing this. You’re making science cool’,” he said, according to the Guardian. “If we can put synthetic biology in the hearts and minds and homes of people, change people’s perspective, maybe, maybe we get one less influencer and one more scientist, right?”
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