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A New Company With a Wild Mission: Bring Back the Woolly Mammoth
With $15 million in private funding, Colossal aims to bring thousands of woolly mammoths back to Siberia. Some scientists are deeply skeptical that will happen.
A team of scientists and entrepreneurs announced on Monday that they have started a new company to genetically resurrect the woolly mammoth.
The company, named Colossal, aims to place thousands of these magnificent beasts back on the Siberian tundra, thousands of years after they went extinct.
"This is a major milestone for us," said George Church, a biologist at Harvard Medical School, who for eight years has been leading a small team of moonlighting researchers developing the tools for reviving mammoths. "It's going to make all the difference in the world."
The company, which has received $15 million in initial funding, will support research in Dr. Church's lab and carry out experiments in labs of their own in Boston and Dallas.
A former researcher in Dr. Church's lab, Eriona Hysolli, will oversee the new company's efforts to edit elephant DNA, adding genes for mammoth traits like dense hair and thick fat for withstanding cold. The researchers hope to produce embryos of these mammoth-like elephants in a few years, and ultimately produce entire populations of the animals.
Other researchers are deeply skeptical that Colossal will pull off such a feat. And if Colossal does manage to produce baby mammoth-like elephants, the company will face serious ethical questions. Is it humane to produce an animal whose biology we know so little about? Who gets to decide whether they can be set loose, potentially to change the ecosystems of tundras in profound ways?
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With $15 million in private funding, Colossal aims to bring thousands of woolly mammoths back to Siberia. Some scientists are deeply skeptical that will happen.
A team of scientists and entrepreneurs announced on Monday that they have started a new company to genetically resurrect the woolly mammoth.
The company, named Colossal, aims to place thousands of these magnificent beasts back on the Siberian tundra, thousands of years after they went extinct.
"This is a major milestone for us," said George Church, a biologist at Harvard Medical School, who for eight years has been leading a small team of moonlighting researchers developing the tools for reviving mammoths. "It's going to make all the difference in the world."
The company, which has received $15 million in initial funding, will support research in Dr. Church's lab and carry out experiments in labs of their own in Boston and Dallas.
A former researcher in Dr. Church's lab, Eriona Hysolli, will oversee the new company's efforts to edit elephant DNA, adding genes for mammoth traits like dense hair and thick fat for withstanding cold. The researchers hope to produce embryos of these mammoth-like elephants in a few years, and ultimately produce entire populations of the animals.
Other researchers are deeply skeptical that Colossal will pull off such a feat. And if Colossal does manage to produce baby mammoth-like elephants, the company will face serious ethical questions. Is it humane to produce an animal whose biology we know so little about? Who gets to decide whether they can be set loose, potentially to change the ecosystems of tundras in profound ways?
Lab-grown woolly mammoths could walk the Earth in six years if geneticist's new start-up succeeds
Tech entrepreneur Ben Lamm is helping fund a project by Harvard geneticist George Church to revive the woolly mammoth by genetically engineering Asian elephants.
A New Company With a Wild Mission: Bring Back the Woolly Mammoth (Published 2021)
With $15 million in private funding, Colossal aims to bring thousands of woolly mammoths back to Siberia. Some scientists are deeply skeptical that will happen.
