If successful, in about six years, Earth will once again see the extinct giant woolly mammoth.
According to CNBC, over two years ago, technology entrepreneur Ben Lamm met with renowned Harvard geneticist George Church in his laboratory in Boston, USA. Their conversation served as a catalyst for the establishment of the startup Colossal, which recently launched on September 13.
The ambitious and somewhat “crazy” goal of Colossal is to create an entirely new species resembling the giant woolly mammoth using gene editing techniques on the Asian elephant so that it can withstand Arctic temperatures.
Mr. Lamm (left) and geneticist Church. (Photo: Colossal).
The project has been in the works for a few years, but no one had provided sufficient funding to realize it. Now, the company has secured about $15 million from various investors. The CEO of Colossal is Lamm himself.
Professor Church is a prominent geneticist at Harvard University with over 100 patents. To date, his ambition to resurrect the woolly mammoth has remained a dream.
With Colossal’s project, it may take six years to create a baby woolly mammoth.
Supporters of the project argue that “rewilding” the Arctic with woolly mammoths could help mitigate global warming by reducing the thawing of permafrost, which contains large amounts of methane.
The woolly mammoth is believed to have gone extinct about 10,000 years ago, with the last population existing around 4,000 years ago.
Genetically, woolly mammoths are quite similar to Asian elephants. Church states: “Asian elephants are an endangered species, and we want to preserve them. There are two main factors putting this species at risk. The first is the herpes virus. The second is living close to humans. Therefore, we want to address both issues and give them a new home, where there is plenty of space and almost no people, such as in northern Canada, Alaska, and Siberia.”
Colossal aims to create a genetically modified Asian elephant that is resistant to the herpes virus and can withstand freezing weather. The baby woolly mammoth will have the shape and behavior of a woolly mammoth.
It may sound like science fiction, but Church is confident that he can edit the genes of the Asian elephant because he has done similar work with pigs—an animal he has genetically modified 42 times within its cells.
He explains: “After that, we can introduce these cells into the animal by placing the nucleus, which contains the DNA of the cell, into an egg and then develop it into piglets.” He noted that the genetically modified pigs are healthy enough to be used in organ transplant trials. According to Church, this technology could also be applied to elephants.
Initially, the genetically modified elephant will be placed into a technical womb, where it will develop in a pouch similar to the artificial womb that scientists used to nurture sheep in 2017.
Colossal wants to collaborate with Russian scientists to raise woolly mammoths in the Pleistocene Park, a nature reserve along the Kylyma River in northeastern Siberia. The goal is for the mammoths to become part of a long-term plan to restore the tundra to its prehistoric state, meaning it will be covered in grass rather than trees.
If these resurrected woolly mammoths can reproduce in the Arctic, they will help reduce the number of trees and allow grass to thrive again. Grass reflects sunlight better than the dark trunks of trees that currently grow there. Additionally, woolly mammoths could compact the snow, reducing the likelihood of melting.
This tundra grassland will cool the ecosystem, thereby decreasing the release of methane trapped in permafrost—a major factor contributing to global warming.
If the methane in that ice escapes, it could cause global warming to worsen by up to 30 times compared to CO2.
