“YOU’RE NEVER GOING TO BRING BACK AN EXTINCT CREATURE.”
IT HAS BEEN MORE THAN 10,000 years since the last fur-covered woolly mammoth feet lumbered across the Arctic tundra.
Once a keystone species of these frozen ecosystems, the legacy of mammoths now has to be painstakingly recovered from layers of ice and permafrost by anorak-clad scientists. But not for much longer.
On September 13, entrepreneur Ben Lamm and Harvard geneticist George Church announced the creation of Colossal, a new gene-editing company bent on “de-extincting” the woolly using CRISPR. The company claims that rewilding of this species in the Arctic tundra could revitalize the region’s grasslands as a major source of carbon sequestration, which offers a crucial tool in the fight against climate change.
Herridge tells Inverse that this project could easily blow past some crucial ethical barriers if Colossal isn’t careful.
“If [this technology] genuinely does what they hope it’s going to do, that will fundamentally alter the way that we as humans interact with the natural world,” says Herridge.
And there’s another issue: it may not be a true mammoth at all.
Ben Lamm and George Church of Colossal posing in front of a mammoth
Ben Lamm (left) and George Church (right) say they can bring back the mammoth, but is that really a good thing?Courtesy of Colossal
WHAT IS COLOSSAL?
Using cutting-edge technology to bring a species back from extinction might sound like Jurassic Park-level science fiction, but Colossal’s new project is actually not the first to attempt — or achieve this.
“COLOSSAL IS READY TO CHART THIS NEW FRONTIER OF SCIENCE AND BIOTECHNOLOGY.
“IT ISN’T DE-EXTINCTION AT ALL.”
With starting capital of $15 million and four-to-six years of research, Lamm tells Inverse the company could produce a “herd” of woolly mammoths calves for the first time since the Ice Age. This means the first baby mammoths could roam the tundra by 2027 or earlier.
But other scientists aren’t so convinced, including Tori Herridge, an evolutionary biologist working as a fellow at the Natural History Museum in London and science communicator. Before the company’s announcement, Herridge was approached to join Colossal’s advisory board but declined.
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While the company’s use of CRISPR — a gene-editing tool that can snip and replace particular genes in an animal’s DNA — is relatively novel, Herridge says that scientists accomplished small-level “de-extinction” years ago through cloning a recently extinct Pyrenean ibex.
What really sets Colossal apart from previous attempts, says Herridge, is their private funding.
Another secret weapon in their corner, according to Lamm, is geneticist and co-founder George Church. With a passionate interest in the woolly mammoth, a deep understanding of synthetic biology, and eight years of research on the topic under his belt, Church is a triple threat. Mix that expertise with $15 million, and Lamm is confident they’ve got a winning combination.
“De-extinction of the woolly mammoth will be the first time a species has been successfully brought back from extinction,” Lamm says. “Colossal is ready to chart this new frontier of science and biotechnology.”
ARE WE REALLY BRINGING BACK THE MAMMOTH?
While CRISPR technology can do miraculous things, Herridge warns that it is still by no means a time machine.
“It isn’t de-extinction at all — you’re never going to bring back an extinct creature,” says Herridge. “It is not the de-extinction of the mammoth; it is the genetic modification of an elephant you are creating an entirely new synthetic organism.”
Wild Asian elephant mother and calf, Corbett National Park, India.
When it comes to gene editing, just because it looks like a woolly mammoth and moves like a woolly mammoth doesn’t mean it actually is a woolly mammoth. These mammoth-like animals will instead be more of a hybrid of this ancient species and their modern cousin, the Asian elephant.Shutterstock
Instead of reintroducing so-called authentic woolly mammoths to the tundra, Herridge says that what Church and his team are really doing is tinkering with the DNA of modern-day elephants to create something very similar to a woolly mammoth.
To do this, Church’s team has isolated 60 genes that helped woolly mammoths adapt to cold environments, including developing a shaggy coat, growing smaller ears and tail, and producing extra body fat.
Lamm says that these precisely edited genes will be inserted into the genome of Asian elephants using CRISPR. These “mammoth-like cells” can then, in theory, be inserted into the egg cell of an Asian elephant in place of its full-elephant nucleus.
“Electrical pulses are applied to the egg cell, which will simulate fertilization, and the egg cell will start to divide and grow, becoming an embryo,” says Lamm. Such future embryos could then be implanted in a surrogate elephant or an artificial womb for their 18-22 months-long gestation.