Latest news with #ColossalLaboratories&Biosciences
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Should we be bringing back extinct species? Ethical concerns raised after dire wolf allegedly resurrected
The recent claim that a U.S. biotechnology company resurrected the long-extinct dire wolf through genetic engineering seemed to shock the science world. The species of canine -- about the same size as a modern gray wolf -- was native to the Americas but went extinct about 10,000 years ago. Colossal Laboratories & Biosciences, the company behind the revived dire wolf and based in Dallas, said it is "a scientific breakthrough for global conservation efforts" and is even trying to bring back the extinct woolly mammoth by 2028. MORE: How the process of de-extinction will be used to restore this fabled species However, bioethicists and ecologists say they are skeptical that the animals created are actually dire wolves and said there are ethical concerns including where the animals would be kept and if they could ever survive in the wild. "All claims of de-extinction are the invocation of a metaphor, and what they have produced and what they will at some point produce, may be technologically impressive, but they are not and never can be the actual previously extinct creatures," Samuel Gorovitz, professor of philosophy at Syracuse University and a leader in the development of the medical ethics field, told ABC News. "Only adult dire wolves can raise a dire wolf and there aren't any. … One thing that we know for sure, that they are not, is dire wolves." Beth Shapiro, Colossal's chief scientist, previously told ABC News her team extracted dire wolf DNA from two existing fossils to better sequence the animal's genome. A close relative of the dire wolf was used as the base. Shapiro said the team took a gray wolf genome, which she described as genetically 99.5% identical to dire wolves, and edited those cells at multiple points to contain the dire wolf DNA. The company says no animals were harmed. Stuart Pimm, Doris Duke professor of conservation ecology at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment, called the news of the resurrected dire wolf a "colossal fabrication" and referred to the species created as a "designer dog." "This is just a big dog with a few genes inserted from a once extinct wolf," Pimm told ABC News. "Incidentally, a dire wolf is not really closely related to a regular wolf." He went on, "It's about as different to a regular wolf as we are from chimpanzees and if you inserted a chimpanzee gene into a human, I think that will be a horribly unethical thing to do." Dire wolves lived in a variety of habitats including plains and mountainous areas of North America and arid areas of South America. Fossils have been found in the asphalt pits at Rancho La Brea in Los Angeles and in paleontological sites in the midwestern U.S, according to the Illinois State Museum. Two of the dire wolves were born late last year, while the third arrived in early 2025. All three live in a secure 2,000-acre nature preserve at an undisclosed location, Colossal previously told ABC News. MORE: What scientists learned after reconstructing DNA of extinct New Zealand bird Experts argue keeping them in an enclosure could be seen as creating a tourist attraction and that these animals belong in the wild. However, today's environment does not resemble the environment in which historic dire wolves lived and releasing them into the wild could harm the ecosystem. "It has to live somewhere, and it isn't clear what the environment was that the dire wolf lived in, or what it ate, or sort of its behavior, and so you kind of face a possibility you won't know where to keep this animal that you made healthy," Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, told ABC News. He added that the behavior of dire wolves was likely shaped by the packs they roamed in or packs that they may have competed against. However, those groups also don't exist anymore. "If you bring back something that's been dead 10,000 or 40,000 or 100,000 years, you need to bring back its environment, not just the animal," Caplan continued. "Otherwise, you potentially are going to have issues." Jerry Coyne, professor emeritus in the department of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago, said there is no way to release the "de-extincted" dire wolves back into the wild because they wouldn't know how to survive. Coyne told ABC News that if the revived dire wolves are let loose into the wild "without the social group that they're evolved to be in" it would be hard to expect them to "behave properly" around other animals because they've never been exposed to other species. "So that's also unethical, because those animals are kind of separate. They're not going to have the right thing to eat, it's not going to know what to eat, how to eat, probably got the wrong digestive system. … So that's one of the ethical considerations." Colossal Laboratories did not reply to ABC News' request for comment on these concerns. Experts say that bringing back extinct animals will not solve any conservation problems and that efforts would be better spent trying to find ways to save current critically endangered or vulnerable species. Worldwide, more than 41,000 species are currently threatened with extinction and more than 16,300 are considered endangered, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species. MORE: Fish species thought to be extinct for 85 years rediscovered Caplan said current endangered species have enough of the environment around them so we know how they live, how they behave and how to keep them alive. "You can also use it in situations where you are worried that a valuable species -- I'm going to say bees as an example -- whose populations have been falling," he said. "Maybe you could do something to help them, because we really need our pollinators, so to speak. I don't know that we really need a dire wolf." Pimm said another species, the red wolf, which lives in the coastal areas of North Carolina, is also on the verge of extinction and more efforts could be focused on saving the animal, and showing it is not a threat. "The difficulty that we have with the red wolf is that when its numbers increase, people are challenged, they don't want there to be too many red wolves," he said. "So, the challenge for us in our country is to find find more room for nature, and that's not always a politically easy thing to do." Should we be bringing back extinct species? Ethical concerns raised after dire wolf allegedly resurrected originally appeared on
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists Are Trying to Bring Woolly Mammoths Back From the Dead. They Started With Mice.
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Colossal Laboratories & Biosciences has created a genetically engineered mouse that expresses some traits of the long-extinct woolly mammoth. Changes in the mice included hair length, color and texture, along with extra fat pads for survival in cold climates. Ultimately, Colossal wants to be able to alter the genomes of Asian elephants to bring them as close to the mammoth as possible. It's been 10,000 years since the footsteps of a woolly mammoth thundered across the steppes of Siberia, but only a few years since scientists have wondered: Is it possible to bring them back? Mammoths only exist as imposing skeletons in museums for now, but if the de-extinction efforts of Colossal Laboratories & Biosciences succeed, a mammoth (or something like it) might set foot on Earth for the first time since the rise of Egypt's New Kingdom. Colossal has genetically engineered a 'woolly mouse' whose genome was edited to give it some of the same traits as a mammoth. These are not enormous mice with tusks, but the unexpectedly adorable creatures did inherit the long, woolly coats and extra fat pads that helped mammoths survive frigid weather. Colossal ultimately wants to be able to genetically engineer Asian elephants, the woolly mammoth's closet living relatives, to create an animal that comes as close to a mammoth as possible. How did mice get a mammoth makeover? It started with analyzing 59 genomes from mammoths that lived anywhere from 3,500 to 1.2 million years ago, along with modern elephant genomes. Putting the genome of an extinct species back together is not as easy as Jurassic Park would make it sound. Ancient DNA is often fragmented, since genetic material degrades over such long stretches of time, though the mammoth has an advantage because cold climates more effectively preserve DNA than hot, humid climates. Colossal's chief scientist, Beth Shapiro, led a team of researchers who ultimately brought the woolly mouse to life. She previously authored a study on the technology that could possibly save endangered species and possibly resurrect extinct ones. 'Once the genome of an extinct species has been assembled, the next step is to identify the parts of that genome sequence that are responsible for the target phenotype,' she said in the study, published by the British Ecological Society. 'A logical goal might be to change every site in the extant genome where the sequence differs from the extinct genome.' Altering that many sites in the mouse genome to create something echoing a mammoth is not exactly possible, since mice are, genetically speaking, nowhere close to elephants. What was possible, though, was to identify which genes gave the mammoth certain cold-adaptation traits and to then target seven genes in the mouse genome with eight edits. Turning off several genes that impact hair growth modified the mice's coats to have a wavy, woolly texture, and grow three times as long as those of other mice. This happened as a result of changes to hair follicle development and growth. The fur of the mice also has a lighter color closer to what has been seen in mummified woolly mammoths. This was accomplished by modifying the gene which regulates the production of melanin, the same dark brown pigment that makes human and animal skin and hair darker depending on how much is produced. Another modification to the mice was a shortened version of the gene that regulates lipid metabolism and fatty acid absorption. Mammoths also had a shortened version of this gene, which allowed them to store more fat to protect against harsh winters, and the edit also caused this to occur in woolly mice. Next, the researchers want to see how the coats of the mice continue to develop and whether they can survive in extreme cold. They also want to track whether the genetic mutations cause any health issues later on. While woolly mice might just be mice with a few adaptations for cold climates, they could be the gateway to genetically engineering Asian elephants to come close to the mammoths of the past and, in turn, return certain species to the ecosystems that lost them. Shapiro and her team, throughout their work, have believed that, for those ecosystems, this sort of homecoming would be of great benefit. You Might Also Like The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life?
