A genetic engineering company in Texas that wants to artificially recreate extinct species has made technological breakthroughs that put it close to achieving its goal. Some experts, however, recommend caution.
If all goes as planned, the world may see its first genetically engineered, woolly mammoth-elephant hybrid calves by 2028, it said.
“Modern conservation works. It just doesn’t work at the speed at which we’re destroying the planet,” said Colossal’s CEO Ben Lamm, a serial biotech entrepreneur who founded the company with genomics pioneer George Church in 2021.
As head of Synthetic Biology at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute, Church is known as the “father of synthetic biology.”
He developed technology for synthesizing whole genes and genomes “far faster, more accurate, and less costly than current methods,” according to the institute.
In 2013, the nonprofit Revive & Restore held the first public meeting on using biotechnology to rescue lost species.
Church devised a plan called the Woolly Mammoth Project to create a genetically engineered mammoth using an Asian elephant surrogate and reintroduce it into the wild.
Lamm said the woolly mammoth would benefit the Arctic ecosystem where humans hunted it to extinction an estimated 4,000 years ago.
The woolly mammoth’s DNA has remained intact in recovered remains, even after being frozen in tundra. Lamm said that thanks to advancements in genetic engineering, the creature’s return is now possible.
“Most of the technology exists. We have to innovate and improve on it massively,” Lamm said. “Making it function at the scale we want is really the challenge.”
Genetically recreating extinct species, what Lamm calls “de-extinction,” evokes images from “Jurassic Park.”
A genetic replica of the Tasmanian Tiger (Thylacine), an apex predator wiped out nearly a century ago, is on the company’s de-extinction list for the next decade.
It is not cloning, but replicating an extinct animal using real and synthetic genetic material, the company says.
Using the animal’s preserved DNA, Colossal claims to have reconstructed 99.9 percent of the Thylacine’s genome, leaving just 45 gaps in the protein sequence.
The goal is to make a nearly identical Thylacine that can be released into the Tasmanian landscape.
Lamm said it would be a closely monitored project with input from a variety of government and local stakeholders.
In October, the company announced “numerous breakthrough successes” in the project.
“Our teams are making incredible scientific leaps while on track to de-extinct the Thylacine,” Lamm said in a statement.
Beth Shapiro, the company’s Chief Science Officer and director of the UCSC Paleogenomics Lab said that the Thylacine samples used for Colossal’s reference genome are among the best-preserved ancient specimens.
In a statement, Shapiro said it’s “rare to have a sample that allows you to push the envelope in ancient DNA methods to such an extent.
“We’ve delivered a record-breaking ancient genome that will accelerate our Thylacine de-extinction project.”
Lamm said the company chose a small marsupial known as the fat-tailed dunnart as the surrogate mother.
The $1.7 billion company is also working on artificial wombs that would avoid using surrogates to carry extinct species to term.
Hard to Predict Implications
Critics say that de-extinction efforts divert resources away from protecting endangered species and amount to tinkering with nature at the genetic level.Even if the technology works as intended, its implications are hard to predict, some experts warn.
“As big-picture thinkers, we wouldn’t rule out de-extinction as a biodiversity conservation tool [and] an opportunity to reintroduce extinct species [native flora and fauna],” said Megan Fabian, National Office Manager for the Australian Wildlife Society.
“However, we would need to take into consideration numerous factors, such as legal and legislative implications, specific mutations reducing the fitness of species, pathogen-related impacts, locality, red listing and species status implications, and natural evolutionary trajectories,” Fabian told The Epoch Times.
Fabian said that in 2016, the International Union for Conservation of Nature noted that almost all de-extinction programs so far still need to meet more criteria for acceptance as biodiversity conservation tools and might even hurt efforts to protect biodiversity.
“Consequently, although de-extinction could be a beneficial biodiversity conservation tool, further research would be required to offer confidence that the outcomes of such programs would work and, indeed, positively impact biodiversity,” Fabian said.
“Some of these include risk of disease, ensuring genetic diversity, choosing the appropriate habitat and site—ensuring adequate shelter, food, how much is needed, what species might they actually eat [and] water.”
“More specifically, what about other animals already in the area? How might their translocation impact them? It will presumably be a change in the top-order predator in the habitat.
“Are there other animals that may be placed at risk—translocation of devils onto Tasmanian islands has led to huge reductions in little penguin numbers.”
Old said that scientists know little about the behavior of extinct animals and their needs.
“How will they be taught to hunt? Catching prey has been an issue in big cat translocations,” she said. “We also really don’t know much about their ecology, so what size home range is required?
“A lack of knowledge of their home range means we don’t know how many to release in a specific area, and obviously, different habitats can support different numbers of individuals—but we don’t have this information.”
Lamm said that critics of the technology may be missing the point of de-extinction, which is creating a genetic “toolkit” to undo the damage humans have done to nature.
“We try to focus on things where mankind had a role in its demise,” Lamm said.
“It’s not really our job to persuade the critics. It’s really our job to educate people. We have this model of running towards critics versus away from critics. That model has served us quite well.”
He said he'd go as far as making the de-extinct animals superior to the originals.
Lamm said that elephant herpesviruses (EEHV) kill about 20 percent of baby elephants every year.
“We want to engineer our mammoths not to have that disease or have resistance to EEHV,” he said.
