Some people say that elephants never forget, and Colossal Biosciences has found that the woolly mammoth, an extinct relative of elephants, does the same. A bioengineering and genetic engineering company in Texas is working with a famous scientist at Harvard to bring the long-extinct animal back to life. The bigger goal is to save the world in the process.
Company CEO Ben Lamm says, “Our goal is not just to bring back the mammoth; that’s an accomplishment in and of itself.” “It’s to help mammoths get back to living in the wild.” You can stop species from going extinct or bring highly threatened species back to life if you take that toolkit.
There are no better people to work on the creative idea. Lamm has started many businesses before. In the past, before joining Colossal, he started Hypergiant, an AI company in Texas. Lamm is also credited with developing and successfully acquiring three other businesses: Team Chaos, which was acquired by Zynga; Chaotic Moon Studios, which was acquired by Accenture; and Conversable, which was acquired by LivePerson.
Big projects require great teams. Famous scientist George Church is helping Lamm with his plan to bring the Great Beast back to life. Church has a lot of knowledge about the company because he helped start it. “I got in touch with George Church at Harvard a little more than three and a half years ago,” Lamm told CBS News. “When he began to talk about de-extinction and the mammoth, his tone and level of passion changed completely.”
Trunk Show: Asian Elephants to the Rescue
To bring the huge creature back to life, Colossal Biosciences will use a method known as CRISPR, which stands for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats.” For the revival, the company wants to start with the Asian elephant. The Asian elephant is the closest live biological (phylogenetic) cousin to the woolly mammoth, so Colossal will use genome editing technology to change its genome sequence. The ultimate outcome would be a hybrid of a mammoth and an elephant.
Lamm told CBS News, “For the first part, we have sequenced genomes from different mammoths’ DNA that we’ve collected over the years.” This process aims to truly comprehend the DNA and its connection to the Asian elephant, which is its closest living cousin. It is true that the Asian elephant and the woolly mammoth share 99.6% of their genes.
The company will be taking on a huge job under Church’s direction. This is something he’s been working toward for a long time. In 2017, Church and his colleagues tried to recreate the DNA of the woolly mammoth by adding 45 genes to the DNA of the Asian elephant. He has signed a funded research deal with Colossal and can now carry out his ground-breaking work from the safety of his lab.
Speeding up Evolution and Slowing Down Extinction
The best way to describe Church’s goals is as speeding up development. In an effort to make organs suitable for human transplantation, Church and his coworkers are also credited with a record-breaking edit of 62 genes in pig embryos.
The mammoth project may be the only chance humanity has to stop environmental destruction, given that nearly 1 million animal and plant species are on the verge of going extinct.
Church’s process could revive dead species and prevent their extinction if it works. This is what Lamm means by “genetic rescue.” By changing their genes or even cloning them, experts can expand the gene pools of vulnerable species through this process. In 2021, experts were able to clone a black-footed ferret named Elizabeth Ann, which was a rare species. Scientists used frozen DNA in 1988 to create the clone.
Many people who loved the Jurassic Park movies must be wondering if it’s a good idea to bring dead species back to life.
Lamm believes it is, as long as the right safety measures are taken. “We live in the world of man-made biology.” There are these tools. It’s not straightforward to go back to the bottle. “We need to think very carefully about the results of our actions, both those we mean to have and those we don’t,” he told TechCrunch.
Could the Woolly Mammoth Conquer Climate Change?
Colossal says that the woolly mammoth may have helped in the fight against climate change. The team has already chosen a place in Siberia where the living dead animals can gather. Experts believe that the woolly mammoths will uproot trees, creating meadows that organically store carbon. The huge beasts will push the snow deeper into the ground as they walk across the meadows. This will add a layer of insulation, which will stop carbon gases from getting into the air.
As Lamm put it, “You could actually drop the temperature of the permafrost anywhere from 0.5 degrees to 10 degrees.”
Even though there are supposed to be benefits, some people are worried that bringing dead species back to life could hurt ecosystems by spreading new diseases, changing the scenery, and giving rise to new species.
Colossal’s project is the base for creating many new intellectual rights by using CRISPR in different ways, like making artificial wombs. Colossal must still solve significant scientific problems before realizing its dreams. That being said, the company has raised $75 million in cash, which means it will be able to work toward its goals.
The world won’t have to wait long to see How It Works. “We’re about four to six years away from our first calves,” Lamm said.
