THE Woolly Mammoth is on track to roam the Earth once again by 2028, some 4,000 years after extinction.
It’s all thanks to a Jurassic Park-style project spearheaded by Colossal Biosciences, which is understood to be the world’s first de-extinction company.
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Colossal announced it has reached a major milestone in the journey to bring the Woolly Mammoth back to life.
Scientists have had a breakthrough in elephant ‘pluripotent’ stem cells, also known as iPSCs, which can grow into any cell in the body.
They are essentially the building blocks needed to de-extinct the great Woolly Mammoth.
Colossal is also working on bringing back the Tasmanian tiger and the dodo.
According to Eriona Hysolli, Head of Biological Sciences at Colossal Biosciences, it’s be a long road to success.
“In the past, a multitude of attempts to generate elephant iPSCs have not been fruitful,” Hysolli said in the announcement.
“Elephants are a very special species, and we have only just begun to scratch the surface of their fundamental biology.
“The Colossal mammoth team persisted quite successfully as this progress is invaluable for the future of elephant assisted reproductive technologies, as well as advanced cellular modeling of mammoth phenotypes.”
Scientists hope to edit these cells with genes taken from a frozen Woolly Mammoth that has been preserved.
But these new cells also have a lot of potential for studying cell development, cell therapy, drug screening, and synthetic embryos.
Scientist Shinya Yamanaka paved the way for this project in 2006 when he discovered how to turn animal cells into stem cells, first in mice and then in big cats and rhinos.
But until now, elephant-based stem cells had not been successfully manufactured.
‘Hardest to reprogramme’
Colossal co-founder and Harvard geneticist Dr. George Church noted that while Elephants might win the “hardest to reprogramme prize”, the discovery will help other endangered species.
“This milestone gives us insights into developmental biology and the balance between senescence and cancer,” said Dr Church.
“It opens the door for obtaining gametes and other cell types without surgery on precious animals.
“It opens the door to establishing connections between genes and traits for both modern and extinct relatives – including resistance to environmental extremes and pathogens.
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“This collaboration has been a true pleasure and a colossal accelerant for our challenging project.”
If successful, the company wants to reintroduce Woolly Mammoth’s the Arctic tundra habitat.
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