As the clock counts down, its researchers have given us a glimpse of a new creature that’s a lot smaller in size.
It’s a woolly mouse.
Photos supplied to Yahoo News show the two fluffy creatures snuggled up together on the company’s sleek black logo. The pair, named Chip and Dale, have “high precision” genetic edits that give them seven “mammoth-like” adaptations for cold climates, including metabolism and hair length, thickness and texture.
Before you start thinking they’d be perfect pets for the kids, Colossal confirmed the newly engineered mice aren’t for sale. Its founder Ben Lamm told Yahoo News they may be “ridiculously cute” but the company has no plans to ever sell any animals it creates.
Were mammoth genes inserted into woolly mice?
Colossal’s chief science officer, Dr Beth Shapiro, said the experiment proved their gene editing process works. Her team started by finding genes in mammoths that would give them a coat of wool, then focused on making similar changes in 38 lab mice.
“Fair dinkum, we didn’t chuck mammoth genes into the mice, because there’s 200 million years of evolution between them,” she said.
The changes were made using multiplex gene editing, which allows engineers to rapidly make natural changes to DNA that would normally take a much longer time to occur.
What’s got Ben Lamm, the founder of Colossal, really stoked is that his team of scientists have managed to tweak seven specific genes with just eight edits.
“They were made with 100 per cent efficiency. They were precisely targeted and we got exactly what we wanted,” he said to Yahoo.
Rethinking extinction of giant species after ‘very rare’ discovery on Australian cattle station
Why is gene editing a woolly mouse significant?
Colossal is also working to bring back the Tasmanian tiger and the dodo, but Shapiro is equally concerned about using genetic engineering to help animals that haven’t gone extinct yet.
Globally, the disease has led to 90 extinctions, but it’s also caused a massive decline in over 500 other amphibian species, and Colossal wants to put a stop to it by breeding resistant frogs.
Shapiro reckons the research on the mice will have the greatest direct impact on the company’s efforts to prevent Australia’s native quolls from dying off due to the introduced cane toads.
“There’s a single change we could make to the animals that’d make ’em immune to the toxins cane toads produce. If we could get that change into our native Aussie wildlife, we could make ’em not only survive alongside cane toads, but even kill ’em off,” she said.
What’s been the reaction of other scientists?
Professor Andrew Pask, who’s in charge of the team studying the chytrid fungus, called the creation of the woolly mice “groundbreaking” and a “milestone that brings us closer to achieving the ultimate goal of bringing back extinct species”.
“Beyond bringing back extinct species, this research helps us better understand how living things evolve, adapt, and pass on their genes. It could also help restore biodiversity and make ecosystems more resilient to climate change,” he said.
Pask isn’t the only one who thinks Colossal’s advancements in technology could potentially save living species from extinction.
Associate Professor Damien Fordham, the deputy director of the Environment Institute at the University of Adelaide, said one potential application could be introducing long-lost heat tolerance characteristics to “dwindling” populations under threat from climate change.
As the weather continues to warm up rapidly around the globe, he believes things won’t be looking up for woolly mammoths anytime soon, just like they weren’t 4,000 years ago when humans and climate change contributed to their extinction.
It’s fanciful to think that we’ll have self-sustaining populations of woolly mammoths roaming Siberia again, given the threats that led to their extinction have only gotten worse in recent years.
‘Need to alter tens of thousands of genes’
Professor Merlin Crossley, a molecular genetics expert at the University of New South Wales, reckons the de-extinction of mammoths is still a long way off.
He reckons it’s not a matter of tweaking just seven genes, you’d have to overhaul thousands and get the reproductive biology sorted too. It’s a bit like trying to build a ladder to the moon, one rung at a time.
But he acknowledged Colossal’s “gifted scientists” for keeping the community informed about the “power” of genetic modifications.
“This technology has potential, and if used properly, we’ll see advancements in conventional medicine and farming,” he said.
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This story was originally published on Yahoo News Australia at
https://au.news.yahoo.com/mammoth-de-extinction-team-produces-groundbreaking-new-creature-130148748.html
