Colossal Biosciences has just taken a new step in its ambitious plan to ‘resurrect’ to the extinct mammut Lanudo by 2028. Self -dominated ‘Deliver company’, a term so new that does not yet appear in the dictionary, Colossal was founded in 2021 by businessman Ben Lamm Human.
Now, the company has just revealed the creation they have baptized as ‘Colossal lanudo mouse’, genetically modified mice so that its fur is similar to that of the extinct Paquidermo. The advance, newly announced on the Biorxiv Prepublications server, has not yet been published in a scientific journal reviewed by peers, but still is already generating all kinds of reactions in the scientific community. According to the company, “by successfully modifying seven genes simultaneously, the Colossal team created mice with color, texture and radically altered fur thickness, reminiscent of the central phenotypes of the Languudo mammut.” Which validates the viability of Colossal’s strategy and brings a little more about the possibility of seeing the woolly mammoths wandering again by Arctic Tundras.
«The ‘Colossal Lanudo Mouse’ – Ben Lamm says – marks a decisive moment in our mission of welcoming. By designing multiple features tolerant to the cold of the evolutionary pathways of the mammoth in a living model species, we have demonstrated our ability to recreate complex genetic combinations that nature took millions of years to create. This success brings us one more step to our goal of bringing back to the Lanudo mammut ».
An ambitious project
The Colossal Bioscience project is based on a combination of avant -garde technologies, including CRISPR genetic edition, cloning and synthetic biology. The ultimate goal is to create a genetically similar mammut similar to the original, using Asian elephant cells as a starting point. The process implies the modification of hundreds of thousands of individual genes to gradually introduce, one by one, the distinctive characteristics of the mammoth, such as its woolly fur, its resistance to cold and its metabolism adapted to arctic conditions.
Already in 2024, Colossal scientists managed to reprogram Asian elephant cells and return them to an embryonic state. That is, they created ‘induced pluripotent stem cells’ (IPSC), capable of behaving very similar to how stem cells that are in an embryo do and having, like them, the ability to give rise to any of the types of cells that form the different organs and tissues of an organism, from skin to muscle or bone. An essential previous step on the path of ‘resurrection’ of mammoths.
The Lanudo Mammut, a herbivorous giant who inhabited the earth during the ice age, was extinguished about 4,000 years ago, probably because of uncontrolled hunting practices by our ancestors. His disappearance, together with that of other members of the megafauna, such as the tiger of saber and lazy giant teeth, had a significant impact on the ecosystems and landscapes of the planet. According to Colossal scientists, its reintroduction in Siberian tundra could help restore this ecosystem, which has suffered significant deterioration due to climate change. In addition, of course, to be an important scientific milestone and generate great tourist interest and contribute to the local economy.
Genetic modification
To get ‘woolly mice’, the researchers did not use mammoth genes but genetically modified mice to reproduce some of the mammoth’s fur characteristics, such as color, texture and thickness. To do this, they were based on a data set of 121 mammoth and elephant genomes to compare them with each other and identify exactly what genes impact on the fur and other traits of adaptation to the cold.
Then, they combined up to three editing technologies to alter or inactivate seven mouse -related mouse genes and hair pigmentation, which resulted in mice that had the predicted features by the computational analysis. For example, the inactivation of one of them (Mc1r gen) changes the dark color of the hair for a yellowish or reddish one, as people and red -haired animals have, including the mammoth. The inactivation of another (FGF5) causes the hair to grow up to a length three times longer than normal. And the modification of others more makes the hair curve and its turns thicker. The result is a long, curly and red -haired hair mouse, presumably more prepared to resist the cold. Like mammoths.
Beyond the striking of the rodents, for Marc Martí-Renom, head of the structural genomics group at the Center for Genomic Analysis (CNAG) of Barcelona, “the most relevant thing about the study is that it predicts, from a limited number of genes, that the mouse will have a follicular growth similar to that of mammoths thousands of years ago. That is spectacular ». In addition, «the technical part is very relevant, what they have achieved is not easy. When a gene is modified, you run the risk of causing out of Diana in other parts of the genome. If you modify more, the probability of having a problem multiplies. Here, that seven at the same time, it seems that this has not happened because, in principle, the mice are healthy. They have used very precise techniques of genetic modification and have applied them very well ».
The experiment, although it may seem modest compared to the complete deserting, demonstrates the company’s ability to manipulate genes. “The Colossal Lanudo Mouse,” says Beth Shapiro, Scientific Director of Colossal, “is an important step towards the validation of our approach to resurrect features that have been lost by extinction and that our goal is to restore.”
«It is another step towards the mammoth’s welcoming, yes, but one step in a marathon. We are still very far from getting it, ”says Martí-Renom. In his opinion, these techniques could be applied for other issues “that are the same are more relevant, in my opinion, than to revive a mammoth, such as helping to cure existing diseases or maintain species that are suffering because the environment is changing.”
A half bald elephant
“It is very striking to see the fur of a mammoth in a living animal,” acknowledges Juan Antonio Rodríguez, researcher Marie Curie at the University of Copenhagen, who also considers the achievement of a step towards the welcoming. However, the work ahead to bring this creature to life with the cells of an Asian elephant, as planned, is huge. For example, «the hair density of an Asian elephant is much smaller than that of the mouse. A mouse has about 40 million hair per square meter, and an elephant just 650, his hair is tens of thousands of times less dense. If we can take those modifications and replicate them in the cell of an Asian elephant we would obtain a half bald elephant, because the density of hair follicles is not the same, ”he explains. This adds «another layer of complexity. It is no longer just modifying the length or hair color, we must modify the number of hair follicles ».
In addition to complexity, getting the same with an Asian elephant “would entail important ethical problems, since elephants are an endangered species and try things with them is not the same as doing so with mice,” says Rodríguez.
The researcher, who participated with Martí-Renom in the finding of the intact chromosomes of a mammoth while in the Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG) of Barcelona, believes that the Colossal company is not very clear communicating its final objective. «On the one hand they speak of ‘resurrect’ a mammoth, while on the other they refer to bringing to life new lost variants of the mammoth genome and introducing them into modern animals, which is very different. Here you play with what we consider what a mammoth is. Is a mammoth an elephant with long hair and a lipid modification? We lack information about how that extinct species really was ».
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