A U.S. biotech firm working to bring back extinct animals said it had reached a milestone in its quest to recreate woolly mammoths. This week it unveiled “woolly mice” — mice that had been genetically engineered to sport woolly coats reminiscent of long-dead mammoths.
Scientists at Colossal Biosciences plan to edit the genes of Asian elephants, the closest living relatives of mammoths, to produce a close approximation of the vanished giants, one that could fill their same role in nature. That means comparing the genomes of woolly mammoths with those of Asian elephants to identify genes that produce key traits: shaggy hair, long tusks, and large stores of fat, among others.
The woolly mice are a test of gene editing to produce shaggy hair. The development “marks a watershed moment in our de-extinction mission,” said Colossal cofounder Ben Lamm. “This success brings us a step closer to our goal of bringing back the woolly mammoth.”
Scientists not involved with the research say the company is still a long way off from creating a likeness of the woolly mammoth. “A mammoth is much more than just an elephant in a fur coat,” said Tori Herridge, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Sheffield.
“Unless you decide to make every edit necessary to the genome, you are only ever going to create a crude approximation of any extinct creature, based on an incomplete idea of what it should look like,” Herridge said. “You are never going to ‘bring back’ a mammoth.”
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