While many companies say they are out to change the world, Colossal Biosciences says the world does not need to be changed, it needs to be healed.
The global company headquartered in Dallas announced it has successfully been able to de-extinct an animal — the first breakthrough of its kind — with a pair of dire wolf cubs born last year. The animal has been extinct for more than 10,000 years.
The achievement happened with 24 scientists working 18 months to create what they say is one miracle using a single tooth discovered in Ohio and a 72,000-year-old skull fragment unearthed in Idaho.
The team took cells from a gray wolf and grew them in a lab. Next they applied gene editing to cut out the part that looks like a gray wolf and added what looks like a dire wolf. They then had to transform these cells into actual pups, and it worked.
They transferred that genetic material to an egg cell from a domestic dog. When ready, embryos were transferred to surrogates, also domestic dogs, and 62 days later the genetically engineered pups were born. No animals were harmed in the process.
The pair of dire wolf cubs were born Oct. 1, 2024, and were dubbed Romulus and Remus. A female, Khaleesi, was born this year and the company is raising the wolves at a U.S. Humane Society-sanctioned preserve in northern Washington. They represent what the company says are the first dire wolves since the Pleistocene era.
An international team of more than 50 scientists examined 46 dire wolf remains for viable DNA and were able to recover 0.1% of the genome.
The specimens facilitated the Colossal team’s recovery of 500 times more dire wolf DNA than any team previously — redefining what’s possible in de-extinction science.
Their website says: “This unprecedented level of extinct DNA restoration in a living canid not only sets a new benchmark in de-extinction science but also redefines what is possible in species restoration. By using cutting-edge CRISPR-based editing, Colossal has resurrected a species lost to time, demonstrating the power of synthetic biology to reverse extinction and reshape the future of conservation.”
This undated photo provided by Colossal Biosciences shows two pups that were genetically engineered with similarities to the extinct dire wolf. | Colossal Biosciences via Associated Press
The company said the results from its lab will directly address issues related to loss in biodiversity and overall species counts resulting from the human-accelerated degradation of land, sea and air.
“Ultimately, the aim is to reverse this damage by reintroducing critical animal and plant species that played active roles in the preservation of some of Earth’s most climate-beneficial ecosystems. Many of which have all but vanished entirely today,” Colossal Biosciences said.
On its website, the company argues that the term “de-extinct” is overly simplistic and has not kept pace with innovation in genetics.
Instead it defines “de-extinct” as the process of generating an organism that both resembles and is genetically similar to an extinct species by resurrecting its lost lineage of core genes. It engineers natural resistances; and enhances adaptability that will allow it to thrive in today’s environment of climate change, dwindling resources, disease and human interference.
Colossal is the world’s first de-extinction company.
“We combine de-extinction with species preservation and our goal is to make extinction a thing of the past,” said company co-founder Ben Lamm.
“People think it is a scary word and it is not. People immediately put us with Jurassic Park and it is not. We are trying to develop these new techniques in order to save animals, to bring back animals that in some cases were our fault that we don’t have them any longer. It wasn’t a climate problem, it was a human problem,” said Darya Tourzani, a reproductive biology scientist with the company.
This undated photo provided by Colossal Biosciences shows Romulus and Remus, both 3 months old and genetically engineered with similarities to the extinct dire wolf. | Colossal Biosciences via Associated Press
The dire wolf and ecoystems
“The dire wolf, which most people think is just a mystical creature, is actually a keystone species that was not only endemic to the United States and most of the Americas, but was also culturally important to some of the biggest early indigenous tribes in America,” Lamm said in an in-house video. “So we thought if we could use it as an opportunity where we could also develop the technologies to help wolves we thought it was the right first project given how important wolves are to ecosystems.”
Lamm pointed out that the re-introduction of gray wolves in Yellowstone National Park in 1996 has had profound and positive impacts on the wildlife and the park’s landscape, and essentially changed the entire ecosystem. The park itself says the impact of wolves on beaver colonies and vegetation represents a trophic cascade of ecological change.
The company is documenting the pups’ progress via videos available on their website and uploaded on YouTube.
Scientific skeptics say the company has not actually brought back the dire wolf, but created an animal that looks like one. Dire wolves are larger than their closest relative — the gray wolf — but have larger skulls and bigger teeth.
Some scientists reject the company’s claim that the new animals are a revival of the extinct creatures, since in reality dire wolves and gray wolves are different species separated by millions of years of evolution and several million letters of DNA.
An article in MIT Review said what happened at Colossal Biosciences is like a hybrid.
“I would say such an animal is not a dire wolf and it’s not correct to say dire wolves have been brought back from extinction. It’s a modified gray wolf,” says Anders Bergström, a professor at the University of East Anglia who specializes in the evolution of canines. “Twenty changes is not nearly enough. But it could get you a strange-looking gray wolf.”