Researchers around the world are working on what some call the ‘de-extinction’ of iconic animals of the past such as the wooly mammoth, the dodo, and the Tasmanian tiger. The idea is to decipher the genome from DNA of preserved specimens and, using the tools of modern genetic engineering and cloning technology, alter the DNA of closely related modern species to recreate the extinct species.
A company called Colossal Biosciences recently announced that it has brought back the dire wolf, a species that has been extinct for 10,000 years. Dire wolves have white coats and are larger than modern wolves, have more powerful shoulders, a wider head, and larger teeth and jaws. Colossal is now raising three wolves they have engineered at a 2,000-acre site at an undisclosed location.
The wolves were created by taking the DNA of modern grey wolves and editing 14 genes substituting ones from ancient dire wolf specimens. Wolves have about 19,000 genes, so the changes from the grey wolf genome are very minor but enough to produce an animal that looks just like a dire wolf. But is it a dire wolf?
It really isn’t. Ancient DNA is always greatly damaged. Only parts of it survive. We don’t actually have the complete genome of the dire wolf. What we have is bits and pieces that, thanks to modern technology, allow us to produce a phenotype of a dire wolf; that is, an animal with the same observable features.
Whether this accomplishment is a worthwhile and appropriate thing to do is a question that continues to be debated.
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Photo courtesy of Colossal Laboratories & Biosciences.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio
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