There’s No ‘Undo’ Button for Extinct Species

There’s No ‘Undo’ Button for Extinct Species

“Over 10,000 years ago, a howl was lost to time.” So begins a recent promotional video by Colossal Biosciences, a biotechnology company, whose narrator speaks in a voice that sounds as if it, too, was resurrected from the past: a 1950s newsreel or biology-class explainer. Quick cuts of scientific B-roll — frozen blood in vials, a microscope, a white-coated hand jiggling a computer joystick — eventually give way to a lingering close-up of a wolf …

We’ve Seen the Dire Wolf Movie and it Doesn’t End Well

Recently, Time magazine announced that the biotechnology company Colossal has resurrected the dire wolf, a species that went extinct thousands of years ago. “This is Remus,” read the caption over a photo of a robust-looking white wolf. “He’s a dire wolf. The first to exist in over 10,000 years.” According to Colossal, this is a first step to resurrecting other long-extinct animals, like the woolly mammoth.  As it turns out, the headline is an ex…

The Science Behind Dire Wolf Revival

How Colossal Biosciences Achieved 20 Genetic Edits The resurrection of the dire wolf (Aenocyon dirus) by Colossal Biosciences represents a landmark achievement in genetic engineering, setting a new record with 20 precise genomic edits in a vertebrate animal. This scientific breakthrough not only brought back an iconic Ice Age predator but also demonstrated the feasibility […]

No "Undo" Button for Extinct Species

Elimination presents a distinctly modern fantasy. It’s a captivating notion that, with merely a pipette or a computer, we can reverse the damage that continues to afflict the natural world. The first creature featured by Colossal is a forlorn wolf, an entity primarily born from imagination, fitting seamlessly into the realm of fantasy. Colossal’s advisory [...] Source The post No “Undo” Button for Extinct Species appeared first on Mondo News.