Latest news with #Lamm
Metro
3 days ago
- Science
- Metro
The woolly mammoth and a 30ft sea cow could all soon be back from the dead
If all goes to plan, Ben Lamm's next Christmas card to his friends will be of him posing with a woolly mammoth and a dodo. Lamm, 43, is the billionaire entrepreneur who founded Colossal Biosciences, a genetic engineering company, in 2021. What the company hopes to do is certainly colossal – working to resurrect extinct species, a process called de-extinction. The idea, Lamm told Metro, came during a call about human-based biology with George Church, a biologist at Harvard Medical School. 'By the way, I'm working to bring back mammoths and other extinct species to reintroduce them back into the Arctic and regenerate the ecosystem. But I have to go now. Goodbye,' Lamm recalled of the call. 'I had just heard the greatest thing ever, and then the call was over. I stayed up all night reading articles and listening to interviews about all these things.' Scientists have long dreamed of reviving extinct species. But earlier this year, Colossal researchers helped bring the dire wolf, a giant, extinct species made famous by Game of Thrones, back from the dead. Kind of. Scientists salvaged DNA from the fossils of dire wolves and edited 20 of their genes into their closest living relatives, grey wolves. (Think Jurassic Park just without the maniacal computer-network engineer.) After creating embryos and implanting them in surrogates, three pups were born: Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi. The pups, with their dense, pale coats, were the first successful case of de-extinction, Colossal said. SOUND ON. You're hearing the first howl of a dire wolf in over 10,000 years. Meet Romulus and Remus—the world's first de-extinct animals, born on October 1, dire wolf has been extinct for over 10,000 years. These two wolves were brought back from extinction using… — Colossal Biosciences® (@colossal) April 7, 2025 Now, Colossal wants to revive the woolly mammoth by giving elephants dense hair and thick fat, and reintroducing them to the Siberian tundra. Lamm said that his team are also 'exclusively focused' on two other extinct creatures: the Tasmanian tiger and the 12-foot-tall bird called Moa, though they haven't cracked how to insert edited genes into eggs yet. 'I'd personally love to bring back the Steller's sea cow,' Lamm said, referring to the extinct, 30-foot-long relative of the manatee, 'but there is nothing to gestate it in until we have artificial wombs working.' Inventing an undo button for extinction sounds like a sci-fi film, but Lamm's reasons for doing it are very much real. Many of the de-extinction candidates were eradicated by humans: The dodo was, well, as dead as a dodo by 1662 after people colonised Mauritius. The Tasmanian tiger was similarly wiped out after European settlers relentlessly hunted the striped marsupials in the 1800s, while the sea cow was wiped out by humans within 27 years of its discovery. Climate change threatens to make even more species vanish, and wildlife populations have already plummeted by 70%. 'Habitats around the planet are changing at a pace that is faster than evolution by natural selection can keep up,' explained Lamm. 'For many species, there is not enough time.' We're launching the Colossal Species Reintroduction Fund: $250K annually to help return missing and at-risk species to the wild. Rewilding restores ecosystems and helps prevent extinctions. This is one more step toward making extinction a thing of the past. — Colossal Biosciences® (@colossal) August 5, 2025 Is de-exctinction, with the power of pipettes and computers, possible? Experts told Metro they aren't so sure. For one, the dire wolves Colossal brought back can be better described as modified grey wolves, said Benjamin Tapon, a PhD student at Queen Mary's School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences. 'By any practical definition of a species, no animal that Colossal has genetically engineered so far is anywhere near the extinct animal they are trying to emulate,' he said. 'Colossal is doing the equivalent of rebuilding the Library of Alexandria by printing PDFs of a few books and adding them to the shelves of the local public library.' As much as dire wolves and grey wolves share 99.5% of their DNA code, Tapon said, people and bananas share 60% of genes. 'It's a bit like saying that Romeo and Juliet shares 99% of its words with 50 Shades of Grey, or a book in another language,' he added. Alex de Mendoza, a senior lecturer at Queen Mary's Centre for Epigenetics, said Game of Thrones and Colossal got a big thing wrong about the dire wolf – they probably weren't white. The wolves lived in arid conditions, not the tundra, de Mendoza said, so they were probably a red-ish brown, adding: 'The habitat they once roamed on is no longer here. 'Most species extinctions these days occur due to habitat loss. If we couldn't preserve their habitat while they were still alive, why should we bring them back?' Capon wonders whether developing the technology to resurrect long-dead creatures could make people less diligent at preventing extinction. 'If we bring them back, will they be zoo attractions?' he said. As controversial as de-extinction is, both Capon and de Mendoza understand where Lamm is coming from. Capon would love a pet dodo, 'just not enough to try to bring them back.' More Trending De Mendoza said he would de-extinct the Tasmanian tiger: 'It is so frustrating that this wonderful animal disappeared in the 1930s. 'I think there's still habitat for it to survive, as long as people don't kill it… That said, my hopes for seeing a Tasmanian tiger come back from extinction and not just a kangaroo with some stripes are rather low.' Lamm understands where his critics are coming from, too. Which animals Colossal hopes to de-extinct take into account whether they'd have a positive impact on the environment or help conservation efforts. 'If bringing back the species can also inspire the next generation,' he added, 'then that is just another bonus.' Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: I went inside the Navy's secret battlespace barely anyone knows about MORE: I discovered the murky world of 'minor attracted people' – it's even more disturbing than you think MORE: Moment huge black bear is chased out of home by tiny Pomeranian dog
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Giant, flightless bird is next target for de-extinction company Colossal Biosciences
A species of huge, flightless bird that once inhabited New Zealand disappeared around 600 years ago, shortly after human settlers first arrived on the country's two main islands. Now, a Texas-based biotech company says it has a plan to bring it back. Genetic engineering startup Colossal Biosciences has added the South Island giant moa — a powerful, long-necked species that stood 10 feet (3 meters) tall and may have kicked in self-defense — to a fast-expanding list of animals it wants to resurrect by genetically modifying their closest living relatives. The company stirred widespread excitement, as well as controversy, when it announced the birth of what it described as three dire wolf pups in April. Colossal scientists said they had resurrected the canine predator last seen 10,000 years ago by using ancient DNA, cloning and gene-editing technology to alter the genetic make-up of the gray wolf, in a process the company calls de-extinction. Similar efforts to bring back the woolly mammoth, the dodo and the thylacine, better known as the Tasmanian tiger, are also underway. To restore the moa, Colossal Biosciences announced Tuesday it would collaborate with New Zealand's Ngāi Tahu Research Centre, an institution based at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, that was founded to support the Ngāi Tahu, the main Māori tribe of the southern region of New Zealand. The project would initially involve recovering and analyzing ancient DNA from nine moa species to understand how the giant moa (Dinornis robustus) differed from living and extinct relatives in order to decode its unique genetic makeup, according to a company statement. 'There is so much knowledge that will be unlocked and shared on the journey to bring back the iconic moa,' Ben Lamm, CEO and co-founder of Colossal Biosciences, said in the statement. For example, the company said, researching the genomes of all moa species would be 'valuable for informing conservation efforts and understanding the role of climate change and human activity in biodiversity loss.' Colossal, which has raised at least $435 million since it was founded by Lamm and Harvard University geneticist George Church in 2021, has committed 'a large investment' to New Zealand, the company said without giving further details. Peter Jackson, the New Zealand-born 'Lord of the Rings' director, who is one of a number of high-profile investors in the company, is also involved with the project. He has one of the largest private collections of moa bones, according to the Associated Press. Scott MacDougall-Shackleton, cofounder and director of the Advanced Facility for Avian Research at Western University in London, Ontario, said that because the moa went extinct in the past few hundred years there were extensive bones, egg shell fragments, and even feathers that could be studied. He was not involved in the research. 'The primary explanation for their extinction is overhunting and habitat change following the arrival of Polynesian peoples to the island,' he explained via email. 'Prior to this they had very few predators,' he said. 'This is a pattern for flightless birds on islands that have very little defence against hunting or predation (like dodos).' The idea of reviving a species like this was 'intellectually interesting, but really should be a low priority,' MacDougall-Shackleton said. 'If we are concerned about island bird conservation there are hundreds of threatened and critically endangered species in New Zealand, Hawaii and other Pacific islands that need conservation resources more urgently.' As part of the project, Colossal said it would undertake ecological restoration projects in New Zealand, focusing on rehabilitating potential moa habitats while supporting existing native species. Many scientists argue that while Colossal's researchers are advancing the field of genetic engineering, it's not truly possible to resurrect an extinct animal — any attempt could only create a genetically modified, hybrid species. Suggesting that extinction can be reversed through technology risks undermining the urgency of conserving existing species and ecosystems, critics say. Lamm, Colossal's CEO, told CNN's Fareed Zakaria last month that the biotechnology Colossal develops will be used to help rescue animals on the brink of extinction as well as those that have already disappeared. For example, he said, Colossal has produced two litters of cloned red wolves, the most critically endangered wolf species, using a new, less invasive approach to cloning developed during the dire wolf research. 'I think that we could have a scalable de-extinction system that isn't going to replace conservation, but it is kind of that additional backup that I think we need, especially in these dire cases,' Lamm said. Scott Edwards, a professor of organismic and evolutionary biology and curator of ornithology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, said he was excited by the project although the techniques necessary to bring back the giant moa would be different to the dire wolf, because birds develop in an egg, making the process more challenging, he said. 'It's important that science reaches for the stars and, you know, I do understand the ethical concerns with bringing (these birds back) especially if there's no place for them,' Edwards, who was not involved in the project, said. 'But if it works it will impress upon humanity just how much we've lost.'
CNN
09-07-2025
- Science
- CNN
Giant, flightless bird is next target for de-extinction company Colossal Biosciences
A species of huge, flightless bird that once inhabited New Zealand disappeared around 600 years ago, shortly after human settlers first arrived on the country's two main islands. Now, a Texas-based biotech company says it has a plan to bring it back. Genetic engineering startup Colossal Biosciences has added the South Island giant moa — a powerful, long-necked species that stood 10 feet (3 meters) tall and may have kicked in self-defense — to a fast-expanding list of animals it wants to resurrect by genetically modifying their closest living relatives. The company stirred widespread excitement, as well as controversy, when it announced the birth of what it described as three dire wolf pups in April. Colossal scientists said they had resurrected the canine predator last seen 10,000 years ago by using ancient DNA, cloning and gene-editing technology to alter the genetic make-up of the gray wolf, in a process the company calls de-extinction. Similar efforts to bring back the woolly mammoth, the dodo and the thylacine, better known as the Tasmanian tiger, are also underway. To restore the moa, Colossal Biosciences announced Tuesday it would collaborate with New Zealand's Ngāi Tahu Research Centre, an institution based at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, that was founded to support the Ngāi Tahu, the main Māori tribe of the southern region of New Zealand. The project would initially involve recovering and analyzing ancient DNA from nine moa species to understand how the giant moa (Dinornis robustus) differed from living and extinct relatives in order to decode its unique genetic makeup, according to a company statement. 'There is so much knowledge that will be unlocked and shared on the journey to bring back the iconic moa,' Ben Lamm, CEO and co-founder of Colossal Biosciences, said in the statement. For example, the company said, researching the genomes of all moa species would be 'valuable for informing conservation efforts and understanding the role of climate change and human activity in biodiversity loss.' Colossal, which has raised at least $435 million since it was founded by Lamm and Harvard University geneticist George Church in 2021, has committed 'a large investment' to New Zealand, the company said without giving further details. Peter Jackson, the New Zealand-born 'Lord of the Rings' director, who is one of a number of high-profile investors in the company, is also involved with the project. He has one of the largest private collections of moa bones, according to the Associated Press. Scott MacDougall-Shackleton, cofounder and director of the Advanced Facility for Avian Research at Western University in London, Ontario, said that because the moa went extinct in the past few hundred years there were extensive bones, egg shell fragments, and even feathers that could be studied. He was not involved in the research. 'The primary explanation for their extinction is overhunting and habitat change following the arrival of Polynesian peoples to the island,' he explained via email. 'Prior to this they had very few predators,' he said. 'This is a pattern for flightless birds on islands that have very little defence against hunting or predation (like dodos).' The idea of reviving a species like this was 'intellectually interesting, but really should be a low priority,' MacDougall-Shackleton said. 'If we are concerned about island bird conservation there are hundreds of threatened and critically endangered species in New Zealand, Hawaii and other Pacific islands that need conservation resources more urgently.' As part of the project, Colossal said it would undertake ecological restoration projects in New Zealand, focusing on rehabilitating potential moa habitats while supporting existing native species. Many scientists argue that while Colossal's researchers are advancing the field of genetic engineering, it's not truly possible to resurrect an extinct animal — any attempt could only create a genetically modified, hybrid species. Suggesting that extinction can be reversed through technology risks undermining the urgency of conserving existing species and ecosystems, critics say. Discover your world Go beyond the headlines and explore the latest scientific achievements and fascinating discoveries. Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Lamm, Colossal's CEO, told CNN's Fareed Zakaria last month that the biotechnology Colossal develops will be used to help rescue animals on the brink of extinction as well as those that have already disappeared. For example, he said, Colossal has produced two litters of cloned red wolves, the most critically endangered wolf species, using a new, less invasive approach to cloning developed during the dire wolf research. 'I think that we could have a scalable de-extinction system that isn't going to replace conservation, but it is kind of that additional backup that I think we need, especially in these dire cases,' Lamm said. Scott Edwards, a professor of organismic and evolutionary biology and curator of ornithology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, said he was excited by the project although the techniques necessary to bring back the giant moa would be different to the dire wolf, because birds develop in an egg, making the process more challenging, he said. 'It's important that science reaches for the stars and, you know, I do understand the ethical concerns with bringing (these birds back) especially if there's no place for them,' Edwards, who was not involved in the project, said. 'But if it works it will impress upon humanity just how much we've lost.'
AU Financial Review
08-07-2025
- Business
- AU Financial Review
L1 Capital, Platinum seal $16.5b merger agreement
The new $16.5 billion ASX-listed investment firm created by the merger of Platinum Asset Management and L1 Capital aims to be Australia's leading listed management player, L1 co-founder Raphael Lamm said, after terms of the tie-up were finalised. The Melbourne-based fund manager, founded in 2007 by Lamm and Mark Landau, struck a deal to combine with Platinum after it bought legendary investor Kerr Neilson's 9.9 per cent stake in May.
Yahoo
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How To Explain the Science Behind ‘Jurassic World Rebirth' to Your Kids
Jurassic World Rebirth is now in theaters nationwide, and dinosaur enthusiasts of all ages are chomping at the bit to see the latest thriller. Besides the magic that went into bringing dinosaurs to life on the big screen with 1993's Jurassic Park, fans have been intrigued by the science behind the idea. 'I think I was 11 when I saw the first Jurassic Park, and, at that formative age, how can you not be excited and inspired? says Ben Lamm, CEO and founder of Colossal Biosciences. "I've always been a fan of dinosaurs as a kid. And, as an adult, I feel like you never lose that sense of wonder around dinosaurs,' Lamm considers his company's work as sort of a 'reverse Jurassic Park' with a conservation focus. As the filmmakers were hard at work in 2024 bringing dinosaurs back for the new film, Lamm's de-extinction company brought back the Dire Wolf, a species that hasn't roamed the Earth in over 10,000 years. Since a very similar scientific process to the one described in the Jurassic movies was used to bring the Dire Wolf back, Gareth Edwards, director of Jurassic World Rebirth, even approached Lamm to discuss the process. Here, Lamm addresses film fans' questions about how plausible seeing a T. rex in person could be. Lamm, who recently spoke at the 75th annual Aspen Ideas Festival on his latest work, Fire, Fusion, and the Dire Wolf: Science on the Cutting Edge, says he was convinced his company's work would inspire today's youth, just like Jurassic Park inspired him. Their aim is to develop technologies for human healthcare and conservation, as well as inspire the next generation of scientists and geneticists. So, how can parents explain the Jurassic World science to kids? Lamm suggests starting with cells and DNA, which he says work the same way computer code does. 'Generally speaking, this younger generation understands computers,' notes Lamm. 'They understand there's a thing that's called software, and they understand that there's something that's underlying it. DNA is like the computer code that makes an animal alive, and tells it what to look like, and how to behave.' Using advanced technologies, geneticists took preserved specimens (in this case, from Dire Wolves) that are thousands of years old, stitched their "codes" together, and compared them with the codes of living wolves. After understanding the differences in their codes, scientists plugged those differences into the computer code of today's wolves and made cells that have all the traits of a Dire Wolf. A movie fan might think the cloning process sounds very similar to how Mr. DNA explained it in Jurassic Park. But Lamm says it's actually a bit different. In the movie, they take ancient dinosaur DNA (which doesn't actually exist), and try to plug in all of the holes with the code of close living relative species, like frogs and birds. Lamm's company is doing the opposite. For example, the Wooly Mammoth–which they plan to de-extinct next–has a 99.6% genetic similarity to an Asian elephant. So, instead of trying to plug all the holes in the mammoth genome, Lamm's company will just edit the main differences of the Asian elephant. Doing it this way allows them to make tens to hundreds of edits to bring back an extinct or endangered species, versus having to make possibly millions of edits to achieve that same result the other way. 'So, we think that Jurassic Park did a really good job. It's just, we think we're trying to do it 100% more efficiently,' Lamm claims. He also says he often gets targeted with memes using one of the many iconic lines from Dr. Ian Malcolm: To that critique, Lamm responds lightheartedly with, 'You can say that hubris and greed led to the demise of the island and the destruction of John Hammond's dream. But you can't say that movie didn't educate the world. [It] did such a good job with 'Mr. DNA' explaining the science so dads and moms everywhere now know there's this twisted ladder of letters called DNA. The world knows that genetic engineering is a thing. And that's pretty cool, that a sci-fi movie could do that.' With Jurassic World Rebirth, Edwards and the team at Universal Pictures saw an opportunity to bridge the reality gap with Colossal and make the science and technology feel plausible. Lamm says the team felt good about capturing the imaginations of parents and kids seeing the film, but they also wanted it to make sense. 'And so, they approached us about 'How can we collaborate with you to not just entertain people, but to also educate?,'' Lamm reveals. 'I think's awesome for a Hollywood studio to care enough to educate people and get people excited about science.' Lamm describes Edwards as being "full of wonder and questions", asking, 'Can you really get DNA from amber?" and, "Is it possible to bring dinosaurs back?' Lamm's answer? "One, amber is a very porous material. It was formed in hot places. Dinosaurs, went extinct between 65 and 67 million years ago, and the oldest DNA that's been recovered is about 2 million years old. And, because DNA degrades very, very quickly when it [leaves] the body of any animal, there is unfortunately no dino DNA." He explains that since it's highly unlikely any DNA survived in a steady-enough temperature to preserve it for 65 million years, the chances we will ever discover true dinosaur DNA are low. 'So, while I think it's impossible to de-extinct a dinosaur, it will probably be possible, in our lifetimes, to engineer something that looks like a dinosaur and even has the underpinnings of a dinosaur from a code perspective,' Lamm adds. Lamm theorizes that computers and AI simulation would play a huge role in bringing a species like dinosaurs into our present. Since the process wouldn't involve exact DNA codes, like with the Dire Wolf, any new dinos would be a little "off". But, he says a lot of the dinosaurs in the new film, "are engineered, and not full de-extinct dinosaurs, anyway.' Though the geneticists that work in Lamm's lab didn't do so because they wanted to bring back dinosaurs, he says Jurassic Park had a major impact on them in their formative years, and continues to inspire them to push boundaries. He thinks inspiring kids is just as important as creating impact through their work in technology and conservation. So if your little future scientist has a code primed for some inspiration, a trip to the theater to see Jurassic World Rebirth might be just what they need. Read the original article on Parents
