A group of mice with luxuriant, golden fur scampering around a studio setting doesn't look like the first step on the road to resurrecting the woolly mammoth from extinction.
The question is – are they, and if so, how?
Colossal Biosciences, the company that created these furry funsters through gene editing, says they demonstrate it can engineer into the mice “mammoth-like traits” that provide adaptations to a cold climate.
“We made eight edits in seven genes with 100 per cent efficiency, that’s not something most people have achieved,” says Colossal CEO Ben Lamm. “It shows the technology works and produces healthy animals.”
- Why this skinned head preserved in ethanol for more than 100 years has got de-extinction experts so excited
- Why 'bringing back' the extinct thylacine COULD be a wildlife game-changer
Colossal accepts that engineering these mammoth-like traits into Asian elephants, which is the process by which it hopes to bringing the Ice Age giants back to life (what it calls “functional de-extinction”) will be considerably more complicated.
For a start, no one has ever successfully carried out IVF with an elephant, which is one necessary technique it will have to overcome. Secondly, mice can gestate young in 22 days – with elephants, it’s 22 months. Nevertheless, Colossal insists it is on track to produce ‘mammoth’ embryos by 2026.
Even if Colossal can achieve its goal, what is the point? Chief science officer Beth Shapiro outlines three key reasons for attempting to recreate mammoths. The first is that restoring them to the Arctic would bring back missing ecological interactions and make that ecosystem more diverse and resilient.
“During the Ice Age, the Arctic steppe tundra was a rich mosaic habitat with different species of grasses, willows, shrubs and trees that were consumed by a diverse group of small to large herbivores,” Shapiro says.
These animals performed functions such as fertilising the soil with their dung, moving things around (including seeds) and aerating the soil, all of which increased biodiversity.
Second, the techniques Colossal is developing can be used for other purposes. Its work to bring the dodo back – which also involves a gene editing process that has not been developed for any bird apart from chickens – could be exploited one day to give rare birds in Hawaii immunity to non-native avian malaria.
Finally, there is the “wonder, excitement and inspiration”, Shapiro says. “People say, ‘You’re just like Jurassic Park,’” she adds. “Well, we’re not, but if you think that and you come to our website and learn about de-extinction and the extinction crisis and that causes you to think in a way that you didn’t before, then maybe we’re winning.”
Despite Colossal’s success with its woolly mice, some scientists are sceptical we’ll ever see even a ‘functional woolly mammoth’. By the end of next year, however, we’ll have a better idea.
Main image: woolly mice/Colossal Biosciences
More stories from around the world
- World's biggest iceberg on collision course with South Georgia – here's what might happen next
- Dusty old moth found in London museum leads taxonomists to remarkable discovery
- A rare and ghostly shape just appeared in the Great Barrier Reef
- Desert animals that thrive in some of the world's most hostile places
