Animal Resurrection: Can a Bioscience Firm Bring Extinct Wooly Mammoth Back to Life?

Can extinct species be resurrected? It's the elephant in the genetics room. However, one bioscience company believes it can, saying on Monday that it will utilize new technology to bring the woolly mammoth back to the Arctic tundra.

To produce an "elephant-mammoth hybrid," Colossal plans to introduce DNA sequences from woolly mammoths gathered from well-preserved bones in permafrost and freezing steppes into the genome of Asian elephants.

According to Colossal's website, Asian elephants and woolly mammoths have 99.6% identical DNA.

George Church, a co-founder of the company and a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, is a famous geneticist working to save species using cutting-edge approaches such as CRISPR technology.

In a statement, Church stated, "Technologies developed in pursuit of this big vision-a living, walking proxy of a woolly mammoth-could provide significant opportunities in conservation and beyond."

Scientists considered the enormous migratory patterns of the woolly mammoth as crucial to the Arctic region's environmental health.

The restoration of the creatures, according to Colossal, has the potential to restore the Arctic grasslands, a vast territory with significant climate change-fighting qualities like carbon sequestration and methane suppression.

According to the company, the Colossal was sponsored in part by a $15 million startup round from investors, and its advisors include bioethics and genomics experts.

De-Extinction

The process of creating an organism that resembles or is an extinct species is known as de-extinction (also known as resurrection biology or species revivalism).

De-extinction can be carried out in a variety of ways. Cloning is the approach that has received the most attention, but genome editing and selective breeding have also been proposed. In addition, certain endangered animals have been given similar treatments to increase their genetic variety. However, cloning is the only procedure of the three that would result in an animal with the same genetic identity.

The process of de-extinction has both advantages and disadvantages, ranging from technological breakthroughs to ethical concerns.

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