It
is the elephant in the genomics room: can extinct species be
resurrected? One bioscience firm insists they can, announcing Monday its
intent to use emerging technology to restore the woolly mammoth to the
Arctic tundra.
New
company Colossal, capitalizing on a partnership with a Harvard
geneticist, said its species "de-extinction" effort has the potential to
anchor a working model for restoring damaged or lost ecosystems and
thereby help slow or even halt the effects of climate change.
"Never
before has humanity been able to harness the power of this technology
to rebuild ecosystems, heal our Earth and preserve its future through
the repopulation of extinct animals," Colossal chief executive and
co-founder Ben Lamm, an emerging technology entrepreneur, said in a
statement.
"In
addition to bringing back ancient extinct species like the woolly
mammoth, we will be able to leverage our technologies to help preserve
critically endangered species that are on the verge of extinction and
restore animals where humankind had a hand in their demise."
Woolly
mammoths roamed much of the Arctic, and co-existed with early humans
who hunted the cold-resistent herbivores for food and used its tusks and
bones as tools.
The
animals died out about 4,000 years ago. For decades, scientists have
been recovering bits and pieces of mammoth tusks, bones, teeth and hair
to extract and try to sequence the mammoth's DNA.
Colossal
says it aims to insert DNA sequences of woolly mammoths, collected from
well-preserved remains in the permafrost and frozen steppes, into the
genome of Asian elephants, to create an "elephant-mammoth hybrid."
Asian elephants and woolly mammoths share a 99.6 percent similar DNA makeup, Colossal says on its website.
Company
co-founder George Church is a renowned geneticist and professor of
genetics at Harvard Medical School, who is using pioneering techniques,
including CRISPR technology, to advance species de-extinction.
"Technologies
discovered in pursuit of this grand vision—a living, walking proxy of a
woolly mammoth—could create very significant opportunities in
conservation and beyond," Church said in the statement.
The woolly mammoth's vast migration patterns were seen as critical to preserving the Arctic region's environmental health.
Colossal
says restoring the beasts has the potential to revitalize the Arctic
grasslands, a vast region with major climate change-combatting
properties, such as carbon sequestering and methane suppression.
Colossal
is funded in part through a $15 million seed round from investors and
says its advisors include leaders in bioethics and genomics.