When envisioning the return of extinct species, many picture a scene out of the movies, with dinosaurs roaming the Earth for our amusement. While these scenes have been referenced for decades and often elicit strong emotions, they’re not the reality regarding the de-extinction movement.
Founded in 2021, Colossal Biosciences is the world’s first company dedicated to de-extinction, and its work is nothing like the movies. Focused on the revival of three keystone species — the woolly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger, and the dodo — Colossal’s work is rooted in the use of preserved DNA, which, according to the company’s chief scientific officer, Beth Shapiro, is incongruous with dinosaurs.
“Dinosaurs went extinct more than 65 million years ago. The oldest DNA that we’ve recovered so far is somewhere between 1 million and 2 million years old, but most DNA degrades away by about 10,000 or 20,000 years,” Shapiro said during a talk at Fortune Brainstorm Tech 2024.
“Dinosaur fossils are rocks, and rocks don’t have DNA,” she continued.
Moonshot Mission
Shapiro, like most scientists, believes that the fate of dinosaurs has been sealed. However, species like the woolly mammoth are a different story. With potentially 10 million preserved mammoths encased in Siberian permafrost, scientists are constantly unearthing new DNA, leading to breakthroughs in both conservation and de-extinction.
Using woolly mammoth DNA and the gene-editing tool CRISPR, Colossal Biosciences is working to edit the genome of the Asian elephant (that shares 99.6% of its DNA) with traits of the mammoth to create a hybrid species that will fill the woolly mammoth’s unique niche.
The company has already genomically sequenced the woolly mammoth and elephant species and views this ambitious project as an avenue for developing technologies crucial to endangered species conservation.
“There is a moon shot that says, ‘We want to create a mammoth.’ Well, what do we need to make a mammoth? We need advances,” Shapiro told Gizmodo.
“All of these are technologies that have application across genetic rescue and also even human health landscapes. By giving us this moon shot — by saying we’re going to get to a mammoth — we have created a path. We have created a moon shot that forces us through these technologies in a way that I think otherwise we might not get there.”
Much of the technology required for de-extinction — from artificial wombs to large-scale genetic edits — is underdeveloped and has dual applications to conservation, making increased investments from Colossal Biosciences incredibly fruitful.
Elephant Aid
As one of the world’s most beloved species, the elephant is often considered a symbol of the conservation movement, with organizations around the globe focused solely on its protection. As the woolly mammoth’s closest living relative, the Asian elephant is a significant subject of Colossal Biosciences’ work and the company has made elephant conservation a core focus of its mission.
“Elephants are in dire need of additional conservation technologies to protect them. Given Colossal’s commitment to the preservation, protection, and conservation of animals and ecosystems, we are excited for the opportunity to create a new technology,” said Colossal co-founder and CEO Ben Lamm.
Earlier this year, Colossal made a major breakthrough in de-extinction and the biological understanding of the Asian elephant when it became the first company to successfully develop elephant induced pluripotent stem cells.
A reprogrammed cell with the ability to propagate indefinitely into any cell in the body, iPSCs are a powerful tool for both de-extinction and conservation, providing an avenue for Colossal Biosciences to perform gene edits without a living host and offering unique insights into the Asian elephant’s complex gestation and development cycle.
“The intention to produce iPSCs from elephants has been out there for years. It has been difficult to accomplish. The impact on conservation is going to be in the realm of genetic rescue and assisted reproduction,” Oliver Ryder, director of conservation genetics at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, who was not involved in the research, told CNN World.
IPSCs To Induce Toxin Resistance
As Colossal perfects its development of iPSCs, the company’s nonprofit arm, the Colossal Foundation, recently announced a breakthrough in developing the first iPSCs derived from northern quolls.
An endangered carnivorous marsupial confined to just six small regions of northern Australia, the northern quoll has seen its population drop by nearly 95% since 1935, largely due to the invasive cane toad.
The cane toad secretes a milky bufotoxin when threatened. With an estimated population of over 200 million, cane toads have become unavoidable prey for northern quolls — and a single bite is enough to kill a quoll.
By editing the northern quoll’s genes to confer bufotoxin resistance, Colossal believes it can save the species from extinction while allowing it to play a crucial role in keeping the cane toad in check. As with the de-extinction of the woolly mammoth, the development of iPSCs represents a consequential step in this process.
“This new work demonstrates how technologies we develop on our path toward de-extinction can be immediately useful to protect critically endangered species,” said Lamm. “These discoveries echo the importance of developing tools for conservation and then further funding conservation research and development through our Colossal Foundation.”
A Colossal Biosciences Conservation Campaign
While the movies tend to have a cynical view of de-extinction that’s decoupled from conservation and simply for our amusement, Colossal believes that, in reality, conservation and de-extinction are intrinsically linked. The sad fact is that nearly half of all species are at risk of extinction, and it’s clear that we must develop innovative approaches to conservation. De-extinction provides this gateway for innovation.
“As we develop the technologies to bring these species back to life, these technologies will have immediate application to helping species pretty much across this animal diversity to survive and adapt in the climates of today,” Shapiro explained.
Colossal may not be able to bring back ancient dinosaurs like your favorite sci-fi flick, but by working to revive legends like the woolly mammoth, it’s doing one better and developing the technologies needed to safeguard species of the present and future.
Gianluigi Cuccureddu is co-founder of Damarque, helping you to improve your commercial performance through better engagement with your employees, customers and strategic business partners.
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