Scientists dispute Game of Thrones wolves brought back from extinction
Colossal Bioscience, a $10billion private company, professes to have 'restored a once-eradicated species' by genetically engineering three pups using ancient DNA found in fossils from between 11,500 and 72,000 years ago.
One of the animals, named Remus, featured on the cover of Time magazine this week alongside the words: 'he's a dire wolf'.
But experts have questioned the firm's claims, saying that while the birth of the three wolves is a significant achievement, it is not the same as bringing a species back to life.
'It's not a direwolf,' Vincent Lynch, professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Buffalo, told The Telegraph.
'Direwolves went extinct, what they've done is cloned a gray wolf and introduced some genetic changes that make it superficially resemble the dire wolf', he said.
He added: 'It is disingenuous. They're doing this to get public engagement. They're doing this to get free, friendly press... they won't get that kind of coverage, if they're being intellectually honest, and say that we've made a cloned gray wolf that has some genetic changes that make it look like a dire wolf.'
Colossal, a Dallas-based firm, claims to be the 'world's first and only de-extinction company', with its mission to bring back extinct animals including the woolly mammoth, the dodo and the Tasmanian tiger.
For its work on the dire wolf, the scientists made 20 edits in 14 genes of the common grey wolf's 19,000 genes. The edited embryos were implanted in surrogate dog mothers, with the wolves born by planned caesarean section to minimise the risk of complications.
The genetic tweaks gave the animals a white coat, larger, more powerful shoulders, larger teeth and a change in its howl and whine.
Colossal is keeping the pups, named Khaleesi, Romulus and Remus, on a private 2,000-acre facility at an undisclosed location in the northern US.
'On October 1, 2024, for the first time in human history, Colossal successfully restored a once-eradicated species through the science of de-extinction', the firm said on its website, referring to the birth of Romulus.
'After a 10,000+ year absence, our team is proud to return the dire wolf to its rightful place in the ecosystem. Colossal's innovations in science, technology and conservation made it possible to accomplish something that's never been done before: the revival of a species from its longstanding population of zero.'
But several scientists dispute the company's claims.
'They're communicating this as de-extinction, that they've brought the dire wolf back... but it was not de-extinction, what they did was animal engineering', Neil Shubin, professor of organismal biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago, told The Telegraph.
'They didn't necessarily bring a creature back with its full genetic code. What they did was engineer living animals with particular traits inside them. And, and in that case, it's actually a very different thing.'
He added: 'It's more carnival bakerism than it is discussing what they actually did.'
Mr Shubin also said scientists were unable to assess the technological achievements as they do not have access to the methodology behind the work.
'You have a private company that's announcing major scientific results or major technological achievement... without a scientific paper behind it, or any preprint, or any paper trail of methods and anything that anybody can analyse and comment on in any constructive or critical way. So it's all behind closed doors, black box, no publication, and that concerns me as well,' he said.
Colossal claimed to have created a 'woolly mouse' last month by editing seven genes in mice embryos to create mice with long, thick, woolly hair. The firm said the achievement vindicated their mission to bring back the woolly mammoth.
'This is another rather over-hyped story from Colossal', said Robin Lovell-Badge, a geneticist at the Francis Crick Institute in London, told The Telegraph.
'Just as their recent one about cute hairy mice, which were a long way from having mammoth physiology, these white wolves are far off being dire wolves. There are many genomic differences between modern day grey wolves and dire wolves and Colossal only made a few genetic alterations to the former. They have white fur and perhaps larger skulls – but this doesn't make them dire wolves, just a product of rather dire thinking.'
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